institutional and more “homey”, providing culturally specific services to Indigenous clients, and having Indigenous staff or partners to support Indigenous clients.
People with Severe Injury or Illness
Convalescent care is needed to properly address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness with a high severity of illness or injury who do not require, or no longer require, care in a hospital, but require the availability of on-site nursing care 24 hours a day, assistance with activities of daily living, or require, at frequent intervals throughout the day, on-site supervision or onsite monitoring to ensure safety or well-being. It is recommended that the City of Windsor engage in discussions with the successor of the Erie-St. Clair LHIN about how best to ensure individuals experiencing homelessness in the community have access to convalescent care.
There isn’t a specific ideal size for a shelter, but shelters with approximately 25 or more beds are able to achieve economies of scale, and shelters with fewer than approximately 40 beds are generally considered to be at a more “human scale”. Shelters with 40 or fewer beds are also preferred from the perspective of infection prevention amidst the pandemic. It is recommended that the City try to have shelter facilities with 25-40 beds, where feasible. At least one shelter for each population group should be low-barrier.
Shelter design
As a result of COVID-19, some shelters have had to change their configuration of space. There may be a need for remodelling in the future to allowfor long term physical distancing while achieving spatial efficiency, or a need to close certain facilities and redevelop non-congregate shelter facilities. For any new shelter facilities, flexibility in the shelter design will be important to ensure changing needs are met to avoid functional inadequacy, and to minimize costs of change.
In 2018 and 2019, on average, 137 shelter beds were occupied in Windsor Essex on the average night: 75 of these are occupied by single adult males, 32 by single adult females, 12 by youth, and 19 by families. Shelter usage has been decreasing amidst the pandemic, particularly in May and the first half of June (data was available to June 15). An average of 143 households were served per night in April, compared to 105 households in May and 88 households in the first half of June. However, while it is difficult to predict the level of shelter usage after the initial phase of the pandemic, the short term downward trend is not anticipated to continue long term.
Looking to the future, there are opportunities to expand diversion so that it is fully implemented across the system. In particular, fully implementing diversion at the Salvation Army and the Downtown Mission. The estimates belowconservatively assume that this could reduce demand for shelter for these shelter service