Volunteers worked to count every person on Windsor's streets. Here's what they saw

About three dozen people gathered in a nondescript room Wednesday night. Their task was getting acquainted with the surveys they'd spend the next three hours administering, fanning out across Windsor's streets in a bid to check in with every person without housing that night. 

Be comfortable and casual, they were told. Get down on their level. Don't worry if they don't want to talk to you, you can move along. Call us if you need anything. You're not going to end homelessness tonight, so don't put too much pressure on it. 

These volunteers were all here undertaking a "point-in-time" count. It aims to measure how many — and why — people are on the street across Windsor and Essex County at any given point. It's the first point-in-time count for the region in three years. 

Whitney Kitchen was one of those in the room. She's a housing co-ordinator for the City of Windsor and has worked in the sector for years.

As teams started heading out, she grabbed some clipboards and tote bags and handed them to Andrew Daher, her survey partner for the evening. He's not exactly her peer here — she joked that Daher, the commissioner for health and human services and Windsor's top authority on the issue, is "her boss's boss's boss."

After that, they started walking. 

It didn't take long before Kitchen and Daher encountered the first group of people: They were standing outside a downtown grocery store. 

Gently, she approached with a simple greeting: "Hey guys." 

From there, a brief explanation. She works with the city. They're doing a survey tonight, some of it federally mandated. It's gathering data so the city can provide better services to people on the streets. 

Most nodded, and Kitchen asked more questions: Where did you sleep last night, and where are you sleeping tonight? If they had housing, she thanked them and moved on. If not, she asked more questions. 

Taking about 10 minutes to finish, the survey dived deep: What brought you to Windsor? When was the last time you had stable housing — like, your-name-on-the-lease stable? What brought you to Windsor and how many times have you been homeless in the last year, or the last three? Do you take any prescriptions? What chronic health conditions do you have? What's your involvement in the justice system? Were you in child protection as a kid?

Sometimes, the answers were long. Sometimes, brief. 

"Do you have any chronic health conditions?"

"Probably."

"Have you tried to hurt yourself or others?"

"Yep."

One man, 56 years told, told Kitchen he was homeless just because he couldn't keep up with the cost of housing. 

Ten or so years ago, he said, he'd been able to get off a housing wait list in just a few months. Was that the case anymore? Kitchen shook her head. "In most cases, no."

Walking away at the end of the survey, Whitney said he's a person she's come to recognize.

"He wants to be housed," she said. "He just can't find it."

After talking to a couple of others in their 50s and 60s, Daher mused that maybe there was more that could be done for seniors. 

It's not uncommon for Kitchen to greet someone by name. In another instance, after a brief interaction, Whitney walked away with a bit of a smile — "They just got into housing," she shared. 

There are other success stories, but sometimes, she said, it's a challenge to find housing that's the right fit for each person, like "re-inventing the wheel each time."

Almost everyone the team spoke to that night had some kind of Ontario Works (OW) or Ontario Disability Support Program income, but it just wasn't enough.

Walking away after another survey was done, Kitchen said the woman was in her mid-20s, and a mother of two. She'd been homeless for the last five years. 

Sometimes, she said, people just can't catch a break. Others have horrifying stories, some even she, as a housing worker, has trouble with. Daher, with his responsibility across the city's human services department, said it was important for him to be where front-line staff are. 

Asked what he'd do with unlimited funds, he didn't hesitate. 

"We would be providing rent supplement programs throughout the city. So exactly what we just saw — someone who's on OW making $733 a month — if we can augment them with another $700 a month to get them to the $1,400 ... that maintains their tenancy. I'm telling you, that is the most successful program," he said.

He came with stats to back it up: The city currently has a rent supplement program to help cover first and last month's rent, or back rent for people facing eviction. It has a 91 per cent success rate, he said. Its budget has also increased about 300 per cent in the last three years. 

"It's effective, and this is a preventative homelessness strategy versus putting something into temporary Band-Aid solutions, which are emergency shelters or transitional beds."

While Kitchen and Daher were assigned to a high density area — the highest, Daher said — many of the people they encounter in these areas tell them they are housed elsewhere.

One woman, who told reporters her name was Nadine, was one of them. She and her partner met on the streets, and they're now housed. But she pays it forward and hangs out downtown with others that aren't in housing yet. 

She joked that hanging out downtown was almost like the old sitcom Cheers — where everybody knows your name.

She came to Windsor for treatment, leaving where she was living in London because she said her recovery remained dependent on staying out of there. She credited Windsor for having better programs. 

Many of the questions on the survey are mandated by the federal government, and there's a second section of locally suggested questions. Windsor has opted to do both sections, to get more context yet keep data comparable across regions. 

People on the streets 'want to tell their stories'

"These folks want to tell their stories and they want to share their stories," Daher said. "They want to be able to tell us about their experiences. And it's really powerful, actually, to listen to them."

Local overnight shelters also opted in, Kitchen says, with gift cards of their own for filling it out, so the survey will do the best job possible capturing everyone without stable housing, even if they made it to a shelter that night. 

About three hours later, they started walking back to home base: Everyone needed to check back in with organizers by 9:30 p.m. 

Kitchen said they had gotten nine surveys completed — pretty good, she said, considering they had run into several groups of people in housing and a few people that had been surveyed elsewhere by other teams.

"Although I now work in an office and co-ordinating homelessness services, I think that being out on the street and getting to talk to people is why I do what I do," Kitchen said. 

She says a lot of the city's services have been improved through feedback gathered on "our field trips, when we get out of the office to get on the street and hear from the people about what their needs are."

The results of the survey, and the number of people experiencing homelessness are in the city, haven't yet been announced since it's going to take some time to collate the data.

But the city does know there are upwards of 850 households experiencing homelessness in the city, and the wait list for housing is years long. 

Sitting with other volunteers, Kitchen said she'd be back out at 6 a.m. Thursday morning.