If you are experiencing intimate partner violence, there are resources available to help: https://www.sheltersafe.ca/
A new development is being built by the emergency women’s shelter Interval House in Ottawa, thanks to funding from the city.
Keri Lewis, executive director of Interval House, said the project is needed to address the lack of housing available for survivors of violence.
“Our ability to provide safe shelter for people fleeing violence in the community has been reduced simply because of the lack of affordable housing in our community,” said Lewis in an interview with rabble.ca.
The project, which is expected to be finished within the year, will provide second-stage housing – also known as transitional housing – for women and families for up to two years while they search for permanent housing.
Currently, there are only 16 other second-stage housing units available in Ottawa for women fleeing violence.
Interval House’s current accommodation is only intended for short-term emergency stays, but due to rising rental prices and the lack of transitional housing, Lewis said women and families are being forced to stay much longer than before.
“Twenty years ago, they would stay for maybe six or eight weeks,” Lewis said. “Now, families are staying beyond a year, simply because there’s nowhere for them to go.”
Many of the families at Interval House are awaiting rent subsidies or subsidized housing placements.
According to the city of Ottawa’s website, there are approximately 10,000 households currently on the waitlist for social housing in the city. The estimated wait time is up to five years.
Housing shortage for women in need a national issue
The lack of housing available for survivors isn’t just an issue in Ottawa, said Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich, director of communications and advocacy at Women’s Shelters Canada. She said the organization is seeing women’s shelters across Canada struggle to keep up with the demand and help women and families find housing.
“Because women can’t move out of shelters into affordable, safe housing, they’re staying in shelters longer,” Geiger-Bardswich said in an interview with rabble.ca. “And that means new women can’t move in. So, it’s sort of a bottleneck effect we’re seeing.”
According to a new report by Women’s Shelters Canada released Monday, 97 per cent of shelter workers surveyed said it has become harder to support survivors finding housing over the preceding 12 months.
This means that shelters across the country are being forced to turn away those seeking their services.
“You turn people away every single day. Last year, we turned away about 800 callers, and that’s not even including their kids,” Lewis said.
Women’s Shelters Canada stopped tracking turn away rates years ago because the rates were so high, said Geiger-Bardswich.
“We stopped counting that in our shelter voice surveys,” she said. “We haven’t been calculating that anymore because we just know it’s very high.”
From 2015 to 2018, the turn away rate at women’s shelters ranged from 71 to 75 per cent, according to surveys from Women Shelters Canada.
Rates of family violence increased by 17 per cent from 2018 to 2023, and rates of intimate partner violence increased by 13 per cent, report numbers from Statistics Canada.
Emergency shelter not equipped for long-term stays
Lewis said that while emergency shelters provide temporary safety for women fleeing violence, they’re not meant for long-term stays.
“I think people for the most part appreciate having a safe place like Interval House to stay, and certainly, in the first few months we hear a lot of expressions of just relief,” she said. “It’s the first time that they or their kids have felt safe in a long time.”
“But then we also hear from clients that once they’ve been here for six months or eight months or a year, they feel like their life is on hold,” Lewis said.
Communal living can make some people feel restricted, she explained.
“They have to abide by shelter rules that we have and they have to share space with other families who maybe parent differently,” Lewis said. “It’s not your own thing, and that is taxing.”
Lewis is hopeful that the new development, which will include four two bedroom apartments, will better accommodate the families she’s helping – some of which are currently sharing one bedroom at the shelter.
Geiger-Bardswich said more second-stage housing is needed across the board. She said that’s why Women’s Shelters Canada has launched a program, funded by external donors, to help emergency shelters like Interval House construct second-stage housing.
Their first project, Sussex Vale Transition House’s Doors of Hope, opened Wednesday in New Brunswick. Another development is currently under construction in Cold Lake, AB.
But Geiger-Bardswich said what shelters sorely need is more funding.
“Federal, provincial, territorial, municipal funding is needed so that shelters don’t have to fundraise to keep the doors open,” she said. “Like we’ve facetiously said, bake sales are not going to help, we need real funding.”
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