With homelessness on the rise across Windsor-Essex, the local Homeless Coalition keeps hammering the fact that there's an affordable housing crisis.
The coalition held an information forum Thursday night to go over programs and strategies to end chronic homelessness. The crowd of about 100 was told there's a lack of affordable housing and the waiting list to get subsidized housing is now 5,000 households, almost double what it was 2.5 years ago.
Kirk Whittal of the Windsor-Essex Community Housing Corporation said investment is desperately needed because the local affordable housing stock is 45 years old and some in west Windsor date back to World War II.
Susie Redekop, the community developer for the homeless coalition, said Windsor-Essex is moving in the right direction with its 10-year housing and homelessness plan.
"2024 is the end of the plan and we hope to see major reductions and hopefully end chronic homelessness by then," Redekop said.
The City of Windsor plans to build 150 affordable housing units in the Meadowbrook Lane area of east Windsor, if its funding application is approved by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The Welcome Centre Shelter for Women is reporting a 27 per cent increase in single women stays from 2016 to 2017 and a 70 per cent increase in family stays during the same period. The Salvation Army said single men stays are up 17 percent.
Redekop said affordable housing works because 175 chronic homeless people have been housed locally since 2015 and 93 per cent have kept their housing.
"We know that there are solutions based in data that work," she said.
Redekop said the homeless need compassion and empathy while the housing and homelessness plan takes its course.
"Empathy. I think criminalization of homelessness doesn't work and it has been proven in research that it doesn't work," said Redekop.
