Ontario NDP leader calls for support, funding for intimate partner violence

When women leave Windsor's Hiatus House, there's often nowhere for them to go.

The team of staff at the shelter are hoping to change that, they told Ontario Opposition Leader Marit Stiles on Thursday, when Stiles joined Windsor West MPP Lisa Gretzky in calling for more support for shelters and support for women leaving intimate partner violence.

"The working conditions are overwhelming, the burden is great, but more importantly the funding isn't there right as well. And so just like every other sector, education, healthcare, we are losing people at the frontline where we need them the most," Stiles said during her visit to Windsor. 

Gretzky said her support for women's shelters stems from her personal experience. 

"At 17 I was out on the street — I was homeless," Gretzky shared. "It was a women's shelter that took me in — they shouldn't have. I didn't qualify to be there. 

"But they took me in and that kindness that they showed me and the support that they showed me help get me where I am today."

One of the major hurdles women leaving intimate partner violence is the lack of available housing when they finish their six-to-eight week stay at Hiatus House, staff say. 

"They come here. They make a giant step but after eight weeks they have to move on," said Maggie Durocher, who handles fundraising and development for Hiatus House.

"We're releasing them to homelessness.  We're making them homeless. That's the bottom line. They're coming here. They're leaving that violent partner, which is what we encourage them to do. Then after eight weeks it's like...what's next? Where do they go?"

Hiatus House currently has 42 beds in 26 rooms, and said there's enough demand for 40 more beds. They have plans to build a new transitional housing centre across the street from the shelter, to give women and their families more time. 

The transitional housing facility with 42 beds will cost about $22 million, about $10 million of which Hiatus House is hoping to raise from private donors. 

The rest, they're calling on the provincial government to fund. 

Windsor-Tecumseh MPP Andrew Dowie said the province provides more than $16 million annual to the City of Windsor in support of emergency shelters, supportive housing and housing assistance each year. 

"Our government is also the primary funder of Hiatus House through the Ministry of Community and Social Services with over $3 million in annual support and with $250,000 more in annual funding today than in 2019," Dowie said in a statement.

"Meeting with Hiatus House on several occasions to be informed of their transitional housing project has only grown my resolve to stand together with them, as I advocate in-person for further funding support with the respective ministers."

Construction on the centre is expected to start in 2026. Hiatus House hopes the space will be open in 2028. 

"We've got women out there who are homeless because they were brave enough to leave — but now there's no where to go," Durocher said. 

Both Stiles and Gretzky also called on the provincial government to recognize intimate partner violence as an epidemic. The City of Windsor declared it an epidemic last year.