Peterborough, service agreements provide core funding up to about 90% of operational costs, and organizations are expected to fundraise the remaining portion.
Shelter System Design
Interviews were conducted with Ottawa, Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie, Northumberland, Kingston, Peterborough, and Halton to gather comparative information on their service delivery model, funding - including use of municipal funding, if/how they flex their beds based on demand, whether shelter services are located in rural areas, and whether they have any specific approaches to addressing the shelter needs of refugees/new immigrants.
Windsor Essex’s current shelter system is primarily comprised of non-profit shelter service providers who own and operate the shelters. The City has agreements with two of the three non-profit shelter service providers. The City also contracts directly with motels for the overflow motel rooms.
The vast majority of comparator municipalities solely use agreements with third party non-profit service providers to deliver emergency shelter services. One uses a mixed service delivery model. Ottawa has agreements with eight third party non-profit service providers, operates one shelter, and owns the building for another shelter.
The Windsor Essex shelter system has some flexibility to expand at times of higher demand, through overflow beds at the permanent shelters and the use of additional motel rooms when overflow is needed for families. All of the comparator municipalities also have some flexibility within their shelter systems to expand at times of higher demand. Overall the criteria for flexing beds is generally that if a municipality’s permanent beds are full they will open up beds (i.e. mats), use motels, or they will have an arrangement for seasonal beds. For seasonal beds there is typically a fixed date that they open and they close. In Ottawa they will use motels for couples (up to 30 days) and will place singles on a case by case (i.e. Trans individual or other needs). All, at least occasionally, use motels for overflow. Motels are regularly used by four of the comparator municipalities, primarily for families. Four of the comparator municipalities have some overflow capacity within the shelters. Less commonly used models include temporary winter responses (Hamilton), warming/cooling centres during extreme temperatures (Halton), and warming room at the local police station (Northumberland). None of the comparator municipalities reported shutting down beds; other than seasonal beds which were shut down based on a date/weather.
Historically, Windsor Essex has seen clients staying in motels took longer to find housing than those staying in emergency shelters. More recently, since the housing worker has been supporting families in motels, lengths of stays in motels have reduced. The comparator municipalities were asked whether clients staying in motels are able to find housing as quickly as they do when staying in emergency shelters. Hamilton reported that they were seeing an increase in the use of motels by families so partnered with a provider to provide support and saw families being housed much faster. In Ottawa each family staying in motels is assigned a case worker.
Windsor Essex’s shelter beds are all located within the City of Windsor. Similarly to Windsor, none of the comparator municipalities had formal shelter beds outside of the largest urban core area. One municipality did indicate that the motels they use for families are throughout the municipality.