London plans fewer emergency shelter beds with an eye to stable housing

Some London, Ont. emergency homeless shelters will have to cut beds next year as the city rethinks how it transitions more people into permanent housing. 

Shelters will be funded to allow a maximum of 50 beds per location, one of the terms in a City of London request for proposals (RFP) for new contracts. The city wants to divert more people into stable housing, with the emergency shelter system playing a secondary role. 

The City of London's Director of Housing Stability Services, Craig Cooper, said the 50 bed number came from consultations with people who use and work in the shelter system.

"We heard that large shelters are challenging for people to attend to, and that there's a need for smaller services and smaller shelters to be in the city," Cooper said Tuesday. 

In August, more than 1200 people in London were homeless, according to city records.

London currently helps fund five shelters, including the Salvation Army's Centre of Hope, one of the city's largest with 117 beds. 

"We would still want 50 beds at the Centre of Hope," Executive Director Jon DeActis said. "Other organizations can apply for this as well, so my hope is that there are enough [shelters] that would take care of all these folks that are struggling with homelessness."

DeActis has been aware of the RFP for months, and while they knew the number of beds allowed by the city would drop eventually as part of their housing-first initiative, they weren't expecting them to go down by that much. 

"The numbers are certainly the change that stands out for everybody right now," DeActis said. He adds that the Centre of Hope is always at capacity.   

Peter Rozeluk is the Executive Director of Mission Services London which runs both the 146-bed Men's Mission and the 20-room Rotholme Family Shelter. He says they're also almost always full.   

"That has a significant impact on the number of men that we would be able to provide emergency shelter to," Rozeluk said of the Men's Mission.

He says the goal of emergency shelters is always to get people in and out of shelters as quickly as possible, but that there are bigger factors at play that keep people stuck within the system. 

"The problem is we're like an emergency department at a hospital," Rozeluk told CBC News. "You're going to stay in the emergency department unless there are beds that open up on a ward, and that's our problem, that there isn't enough safe, affordable and adequate housing in London."

The city is accepting proposals until Oct. 13. They'll spend the next few months reviewing before awarding contracts early next year. 

The 50-bed rule would come into effect in the spring, with shelters continuing to offer the same number of beds this winter.