YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo to close transitional shelter by end of May

YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo is closing down a transitional shelter that was set up to help homeless individuals who relied on the Out of the Cold cold shelter program, which has been severely curtailed in recent months.  

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The shelter was set up as a pilot program in response to the fall closure of almost all of the sites that provided shelter and nourishment for those who needed it as part of the Out of the Cold program.  The pilot 50-bed shelter on Frederick St. in Kitchener was supported and funded by various agencies, including the YWCA and the regional government.

Elizabeth Clarke, the CEO of YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo, now says that there is no longer a need for the transitional shelter to continue operating. 

"We intended this year to be a transitional year, a year during which we could introduce people who had become accustomed to the Out of The Cold informal system into the formal system," Clarke told Craig Norris in an interview on The Morning Edition Monday.

"The formal shelter system is much more structured, there's a lot of supports and a lot of programs that are associated with the shelters," said Clark. "In the old days there were a lot more requirements made of the people who used the shelters in terms of the financial supports that they had to be able to access and the personal information that they had to be able to give."

Clarke said in a blog post last week that the YWCA managed to find permanent housing for 24 people and referred 114 people from the transitional shelter in the formal system.

"Our results have shown us that most of the people who have used the Out of the Cold system have either been able to  be transferred into the formal system or have at least made the sorts of contacts that we wanted them to make with the supports that are part of the system," she said.

Clarke added that the early months of the transitional shelter were slow, with as few as 13 people per night in the first week. Later on, the number grew to 43 people per night, but Clarke says the vast majority of people only stayed for a few nights and had other places to stay most of the time.  Overall she said hundreds of people used it. 

"We didn't offer meals, we didn't offer recreational type programing that the other sites did," Clarke told CBC News. "Because we didn't want to create something else that people would become dependent on."