The homeless: we don't know their story

In Yorkton, where there are no homeless encampments, it would be tempting to think that it's one problem we don’t have to deal with. But that would be a mistake. 

Most of us may not see it every day, or at all, but homelessness happens in Yorkton just as it does in larger cities. The people who work with the homeless and deal with it on a daily basis are well aware of the issue, and have some very definite ideas about what could and should be done about it.

We talked to Angela Chernoff, the co-ordinator of Bruno’s Place on Dominion Avenue, an emergency shelter for adults; and Martha Gares the manager of Housing Support at SIGN, the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours.

Transcript

Dick DeRyk 0:00

Watch the news on television, or read the newspapers, and there are lots of stories about encampments of homeless people, of tent cities in public areas, of politicians debating what to do about it, of police trying to move people out of parks and downtown areas. The stories tell us it’s happening in Regina, in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton, on the west coast. It happens on an even larger scale in cities in the United States where winters aren’t as severe, in Portland and Los Angeles and other sunbelt cities. And we may be tempted to say, or think, “Well, that’s one problem we don’t have to deal with here.” Not so. Most of us may not see it every day, or at all, but homelessness happens in Yorkton just as it does in larger cities. The people who work with the homeless and deal with it on a daily basis are well aware of the issue, and have some very definite ideas about what can, and should be done about it. We talked to two of them: Angela Chernoff is the co-ordinator of Bruno’s Place on Dominion Avenue, an emergency shelter for adults, and Martha Gares, the manager of Housing Support at SIGN, the Society for the Involvement of Good Neighbours. Bruno’s Place is two years old, and began as a 10-bed emergency shelter that also provided three meals a day to clients, and a breakfast open to the community once a week, to start dealing with both homelessness and food insecurity. It now has 20 beds – and they fill up fast on an almost daily basis. In March, there were 442 overnight stays. It still provides three meals a day, and community meals are now also offered at lunchtime on Tuesdays and Thursdays, free and open to anyone – it served 1251 meals in March. It also strongly encourages clients to seek help, to work with counsellors who can help them plan – case planning in social work jargon – and it brings in a rotation of visiting professionals, including addiction counsellors, Indigenous elders, SIGN Housing Support, weekend counsellors, and Metis Association systems navigators who help the homeless find their way around the many programs and supports available to them. It hosts two Narcotics Anonymous meetings a week, and a sharing circle on Sundays. And there are weekend activities like movie nights and board game afternoons. Its income is derived in part from grants and fees paid by government, but is largely dependent on community support through donations and fund raisers. Bruno’s Place, by the way, is named for a homeless man by the name of Bruno who was a familiar figure in Kamsack, and then in downtown Yorkton in the 1960 and 70s. More about him on our website at www.yorktonstories.ca. SIGN Housing Support, which in the past year has doubled its staff to two, is a proactive and preventive program that assists hard-to-house or homeless individuals and families to find and maintain suitable housing in Yorkton. The program’s mission is to decrease barriers that these individuals face. Support, referrals and resources are provided to tenants and landlords to address issues and to promote a successful relationship between the two. The program is open to hard-to-house or homeless individuals and families seeking healthy, safe, suitable housing in Yorkton. Last fall and winter, Bruno’s Place, SIGN Housing Support and Turning Point, a Saskatchewan Health Authority program assisting individuals and families who are infected or affected by HIV or Hepatitis C, conducted an informal survey among those who are or were homeless, to get a better handle on the problem. “Often when we talk about homelessness, those who have experienced it are missing from the conversation,” Martha Gares points out. “For a variety of reasons they prefer not to participate without a layer of anonymity” because of the stigma associated with that condition. They handed out a questionnaire and waited for the responses. They received 13, which they know is only a very small percentage of the homeless and not enough to provide accurate formal data, but it is a start to getting a look at the bigger picture, Martha points out. Those who replied were or had been homeless anywhere from a week to years. For most, it wasn’t the first time, and they coped with it by sleeping outside, in motels, and couch surfing – sleeping on the couch of a friend or family member. Homelessness was the result of not having a job, of fires in their home, of addictions, or of being kicked out of a home because of fights or feuds – honest answers that were not sugar-coated. Asked what would help them most to find housing, getting a job was the number one answer, along with finding treatment and getting sober. Asked what misunderstandings people have about the homeless, more honest answers. Six of the 13 said that most of us think that they are all addicts, drug users or people with drinking problems, that they are poor or users. Added several: People don’t know our story. They don’t know what’s happening in our lives. What would help them the most? Friends and family, jobs, support, Bruno’s Place, SIGN. What gift from someone would have helped most while homeless? A job, advice, shelter and clothing, help with getting around obstacles to get housing, and… a million dollars. What else do they want to say to the community? Healing circles are awesome. Be kind to each other, homeless people and the people helping the homeless. Never give up. It took a lot of work but I got my life back on track. Here is our conversation with Angela and Martha. The first voice you hear after mine is Martha Gares of SIGN Housing Support, followed by Angela Chernoff of Bruno’s Place.

Dick DeRyk 9:56

What came out of that survey that surprised you the most?

Martha Gares 10:04

I don't know if anything necessarily surprised me. I think it was nice to see in some of the respondents they still had kind of some humor about their situation and a little bit of levity. Otherwise, you know, through our program, we're often having conversations with people. We are doing a lot of that data collection. It's just a little bit more private and not necessarily something we would be sharing with the community. So it was nice with these survey responses that they were really about being able to share them, having people be comfortable anonymously giving those responses so that we can bring the community in on some of the information that we kind of already know working in the sector.

Angela Chernoff 10:45

For me, I wasn't really surprised by anything. I think it just confirmed what we have heard from people in terms of before the shelter was opened, individuals were sleeping in their car a lot. They were uh couch surfing and just not having an option, a safe option for shelter. So it was affirming for me, even though it was it was emotional for me too to read the responses because there is a lot of people struggling in our community. It made it very clear, even more so, that yeah, there is homelessness in this community and people are struggling.

Dick DeRyk 11:30

We don't have encampments, we don't have visible homelessness. And I noticed on the survey there's a lot of couch surfing in the winter. There's people sleeping outside or wherever they can in the summertime. What is the level of awareness? What do you hear from people when you tell them you work in homelessness in Yorkton? Is it a surprise to people that this happens?

Angela Chernoff 11:55

For me, two years ago, yes, it was a surprise for anyone who was not working in frontline work. Um, anyone who is on the front lines in terms of mental health addiction, in working within sign in the programs, working at social services, RCMP, they're well aware of what's going on. Individuals in the private sector typically, if they work downtown or even in a bank, they're aware that people will sleep in the ATM area, a foyer. Um, outside of that, a lot of surprise two years ago. Like, I don't think we really need a shelter, is what I got back. But I would say since our existence, there's been a lot less of not in my backyard kind of sentiment coming from the community.

Dick DeRyk 12:43

Martha, are you finding that people are are generally sympathetic to the plight of the homeless or or generally they don't even know what happens?

Martha Gares 12:54

That's a tough one. I want to say most people do feel some level of sympathy, but I think because they don't understand the complexity of the issues and what people are going through, it makes it a lot harder to be sympathetic. Um, because you might be looking at someone who's homeless and saying, why can't they just get a job? Well, in reality, they might be living with a mental health issue, um a disability that's undiagnosed, something that's preventing them from work that you can't see just looking at them. So that can lead to kind of that lack of sympathy and and really oversimplifying the issue where we see a lot more of the background and these are really complex issues because even if you look at a program like ours stepping in and trying to support people, we're still not always seeing a positive resolution. We're still not always seeing people housed because even the supports that are in place are not always enough to get people out of homelessness.

Dick DeRyk 13:48

I was a bit surprised when the question that you asked about what would people like most. A lot of them that said they'd really like a job, which to me was a bit of a surprise because I think the common conception, misconception is that these are people who don't want to work or have issues that prevent them from working. But from the survey, it looks like having a job is is something that they feel would help resolve their crisis.

Martha Gares 14:20

Yeah, I think we definitely see a lot of people who are very interested in employment. It's really too bad that there weren't kind of like vocational employment programs targeted at homeless individuals or those living with mental health and addictions challenges that were a little bit of a broader scope and more available. Um, because some of our clients, even if they are able to find employment, which can be quite challenging with whatever difficulties they're going through, it becomes very hard for them to maintain that employment. We know transportation is a large barrier. Access to food can be another barrier. Um, having a safe place to sleep at night, you know, if they're couch surfing at somebody's house, what are the chances they remember to set their alarm and get up for work in the morning? I think the desire to work is there, but for a lot of people, they really would need a more supportive environment to get employed and stay employed, um, especially off the bat. You know, some people don't even necessarily have any recent job experience, especially if they're coming out of incarceration, for example. They might not know, like we don't know the last time people have actually maintained employment. So I think the desire is definitely there. And it really is too bad there aren't more supportive kind of work programs for homeless individuals.

Angela Chernoff 15:38

I would definitely have to echo that there was a season here at the shelter where it was easier for someone to a shelter client to get employment before they were even to get in into housing. So that speaks to another issue. But some of the barriers people have found even getting employment has been lack of ID. If the shelter address is on the resume, some employers will just bypass it. And then just the routine, this the stability in the routine of getting to your job every morning, working a full day. One of the challenges, for example, is frontline workers, mental health and addiction services, they work eight to four. So if you need to stay connected to your mental health counselor, your addictions counselor, and you have regular appointments and that's part of your support team. Well, they only work bank hours. So then what employer is gonna allow you to continuously leave so that you can stay connected to your supports and stay sober? That is definitely an enormous challenge for people. They're still gonna have appointments to attend. So how are they gonna stay employed?

Dick DeRyk 16:42

What's the solution to that?

Angela Chernoff 16:44

We have great programs for individuals that have identified disabilities from the time they were young. Those, so for example, through task abilities or the vocational employment program. But we don't have anything that specifically targets homelessness, people getting back into the workplace. There is the pre-harvest employment program, they do four days a week, they do the recycling, their target is young adults. So they have had some success because they do leave one day, weekday Monday for those kinds of appointments to keep people connected. But I think what we could do within our systems potentially is as frontline workers, mental health counselors, social workers, really consider breaking uh the nine to five bank hours that everybody holds and having more after-hour supports. Like there's some things that I think the systems could change to better accommodate people that are, you know, vulnerable, that are just trying to get back on their feet. And I have been advocating for that. I have been talking about that and even trying to discover why the change isn't happening. It's been very difficult to get answers. And so I can't really draw any conclusions other than when people are comfortable, it seems like they don't want to change a system.

Martha Gares 17:57

I think definitely programs tailored directly to those who are homeless and hard to house. Just because we know it's a different population, they have different needs. Even if you expanded an existing vocational employment program to include those individuals, I don't know that it would be the best solution just because you're looking at potential different challenges. And especially if people have not been able to get into housing first. Like in some cases, income assistance is not providing them enough money to get housing. So if they were to try to get employment before housing to be able to get into housing, that again creates all those other challenges. You know, where are you showering? How are you staying clean and presentable for work? How are you showing up to work if you haven't slept well the night before? All these different challenges. Even transitional housing or supportive housing could be a really good step in that process as well. Just to allow people a stable home and potentially even a little bit of time to stabilize and get back into a routine before starting employment. Yeah, it's a really complex issue. I think there's a few different ways you could go around it to at least start to see some change. Because right now, an individual coming off the streets and trying to adapt to employment as it exists, you're just not going to see a lot of successes there.

Dick DeRyk 19:21

Angela, you provide temporary shelter uh at Bruno's place, but that's only temporary. How do people get a place to sleep at Bruno's place?

Angela Chernoff 19:32

We accommodate anyone as much as possible. If they just show up, our check-in is at four in the afternoon. And so that is before everything closes, which we found to be a good time. We do ask them to try and get a requisition from social services. We're a little bit different than Salvation Army that has an established relationship with social services. Here in our community, they want them to go down, start to case plan, work on established goals, and then they'll give them a requisition from uh the transient aid allowance money, not from income assistance, like an individual's money. So then that's how the government pays us. Uh, it doesn't even cover 50% of our cost per bed per night. We rely on grants, but that also runs out pretty quick. Like the average person, if they even agree to case plan, they'll get five to seven nights max. And then because we have no transitional housing, like we can't even barely operate as a as an emergency shelter because emergency means about seven to 14 days, getting you stabilized and then getting you off to the ideally transitional housing, uh, supportive living, something that's the next step, something that's going to give you more. And we just don't have those options in Yorkton. So we're covering both ends. We're covering the emergency housing and transitional housing because a lot of people will be sitting here for six weeks waiting for a place to open up and finding a place to sign a lease for andor waiting for detox. We definitely don't have enough services. We do have to provide a lot of complimentary nights because the government funding is just not there for it. We don't charge individuals because the purpose behind that is to not put anyone into a deficit in their funds or to take away money that they could be putting towards a down payment for a secure deposit, things like that. We would like to remove all barriers for them to get into housing as soon as possible.

Dick DeRyk 21:30

But there still isn't transitional housing that they can move to from from there.

Angela Chernoff 21:36

That's right. So the length of time that people stay here is is like transitional housing. They just don't have anywhere else to go. And those that that's even just speaking to individuals that want to work on a case plan, that want to, you know, work on goals in their life, um, get connected to housing support, all of that. There's lots that just they just check in every night and they have no interest in changing anything. you know, we'll be here for those people, but we're also we're pretty new and we're trying to figure out like how do we get people motivated because here they don't have a lot of privacy. They don't have a place to keep their things. Like uh we don't try and make it too extremely comfortable, although I think that we can be a very comfortable place to help someone at least feel safe once they get off the streets.

Dick DeRyk 22:22

But they got to back up their stuff in the morning and and go.

Angela Chernoff 22:26

If they're not choosing to case plan, then yes they do. We we just don't have a lot of storage. But if we allow people just to sit here and do nothing, they tend to get into a little bit of trouble and not make good friendships and, you know, it it tends the fights tend to break out, things like that. It's good for people to get out and get fresh air every day and also have a little bit of a push to go, hey, you know what, maybe if I do agree to work with the case plan manager, then maybe I, you know, and I can have a locker and a guaranteed bed. It's kind of there has to kind of be something motivating them for that next step.

Dick DeRyk 23:01

Martha transitional housing what is it that we need that we don't have do we have any?

Martha Gares 23:09

We have some programs that cater to families, but a lot of the population that myself and Angela are seeing are those single adults and there's really nothing for those individuals. And that's definitely really hard. I know we've seen even some individuals who have been successful in getting into low-income housing and we do also desperately need more low-income housing, they still can end up evicted, you know, within two months because they just weren't really able or ready to live on their own yet and they weren't able to hold a successful tenancy. So they're kind of returned to the streets within a few months. Whereas perhaps if they were in a more either transitional housing, supportive housing where there was 24-7 support, there was a little bit more monitoring of what was going on on site, I think we could see a lot more successes. Because I also know through our program a lot of our clients everyone they know is in a similar position. All of their family and friends are also struggling with housing or mental health or addictions. And so for some of our clients even when they get moved into a place they really want to help their friends and family. And so they're inviting those individuals over they're trying to support their whole network which landlords do not tend to appreciate when you have too many people staying in your unit or they're concerned about the types of people who are at your place. So it's really challenging even for a lot of those individuals who might get into traditional rental housing to maintain that housing because they need more support or they need a little bit more understanding from the landlords. And we know most landlords are running a business. So if they start to see that the tenancy is affecting their bottom line or it's just not working out those tenants just end up evicted really quickly.

Dick DeRyk 25:04

For those of us who don't understand some of the terminology transitional housing what does it look like physically and and as far as services that might go with it?

Angela Chernoff 25:16

I would say transitional housing in ideally would be if you think about an apartment building so what you're getting is your own place, your own private space with responsibilities. But also people on site that can mentor you that maybe you can have support with childcare, maybe some classes with budgeting or people brought in to support and develop help someone develop those life skills that they need to be independent. I know that there are services like this in the bigger cities and it's something that I think we desperately need here in Yorkton. There is a lot of complex mental health addiction issues and expecting someone to be independent and pay their bills on time and budget well when they're trying to you know fight for sobriety or fight for you know through their mental illness to get stabilized, it it's just system overload and it usually is not successful.

Dick DeRyk 26:17

The federal government again just very recently announced millions and millions of dollars for housing low income or or assisted housing most of that seems to be going to the large cities. How does your can get on that list?

Angela Chernoff 26:34

Some federal funding is coming to us you know and that's through the emergency shelter our major funder is the Reaching Home Grant and that's administrated through the Metis Association that is federal money but we're only one step in the solution we need many more pieces of the puzzle to come together in this community my hope with the shelter is to help our community understand that it doesn't it doesn't begin and end with us. We're only kind of breaking down the first wall and we have learned not to try and do everything and accommodate everyone and to frustrate other services a little bit as proof that we can't provide and meet all the needs in this community more has to be done in terms of getting more money in like that that's kind of our piece to kind of show show evidence that we can't do it all.

Martha Gares 27:28

Yeah it's a tough situation when you're applying for this funding it kind of feels like a lottery. So we're hopeful that at some point it'll be our turn I know I'm really trying to step up our data collection so we can try to support the grant writing that goes on even through our low-income housing providers because a big piece of these applications is trying to provide that proof that there is a need, which requires a lot of data and sometimes even hiring specific people to write these applications, there really is a lot of red tape that I think again, even just the general population doesn't realize how hard it can be sometimes to access this money, how lengthy these applications might be or how much data they require but we also know that a lot of the other communities where the money is going also need the funding. So it seems like the pot is just never big enough. So it's nice that other communities are getting some more supports but especially when it comes to the funding and the supports all being in major cities we know that can present challenges for clients as well sometimes we have to have a conversation where we suggest you know is there anyone you know in Regina or Saskatoon could that maybe be an option you've kind of exhausted the resources here. But some people are very aware that if they go to one of the bigger cities, that's where a lot of negative influences for them are and they don't want to put themselves in those situations and yet that's where the resources lie. So I'm hopeful that if we just continue to be persistent and really beef up the data collection, at some point we will see a little bit more of that funding stream into Yorktoon. There is a working group isn't there including the city to look at this and to put in applications we're lucky in Yorkton we have a social housing committee where a lot of different partner agencies who have interests in housing homelessness come together and try to support one another in putting forward these applications or discussing the issues what they might need what's going on. So that is definitely a positive thing that we do have going for us. A lot of agencies in York really well together. It seems like at the end of the day it's just a bit of a waiting game. Hopefully it'll be our turn for some funding soon and we can make sure that our applications are as good as possible.

Angela Chernoff 29:53

And there is a consulting group hired by the city to and that they've come to the shelter I know they've uh met with people in sign they are collecting data getting feedback from frontline workers and different individuals in the city agencies to establish our needs and build a case for it. And we're also really trying to do heavy data collection as well which we have to do for our grants and our funders we're definitely um developing proof through those numbers as well what level of support is there from the business community from service clubs from uh churches I can tell you in terms of supporting the shelter the community has been overwhelmingly supportive and for example Ballroom Blitz Vanessa Andres was our local celebrity and she took first place her and her partner um for funds raised and it was over $30,000 and she campaigned the city she uh had her own social media presence and she worked really hard for us but even prior to that particularly around Christmas and when we had to raise over $100,000 for a renovation the community just rallied behind us and people are always calling always asking what can I do? How can I help? So benevolence and generosity is definitely not a deficit in this city. And that's something I always try and praise the community of Yorkton for and it's something that the Metis Association who administers our major grant has taken strong note of community support is really important on grant applications and the feedback I've gotten from them is they're they just can't believe the kind of support we have in this community. So that's an enormous positive I know that if we moved into transitional housing or someone undertook that and started going, I know the community would be behind that. I think that there's things different agencies can do. For example I I think that there's system changes that can happen within health for example recruitment expanding hours for their professionals getting more psychiatric doctors here advocating for more beds in the pine unit that would really help in our community in terms of doing that intensive care piece to get people ready to get into housing that's definitely something that needs to be done.

Martha Gares 32:14

It would be nice to see more provincial support even in the programs and services that they already provide we would really love to see those income assistance rates go up. I know they were given a small increase this year, but when you look at the previous year the rate for housing for singles in Yorkton was I believe $570 and that is supposed to be for your rent and utilities whereas we know that a bachelor unit is going to be upwards of $700 plus power. Even some of the low-income housing units for adults are not subsidized based on income. So they might also be more than what income assistance is currently providing individuals on the SIS program. So it would be really wonderful if we saw a bump there. We know that there's still shortages in housing right now we still don't have enough low-income housing but a significant increase to those provincial income assistance programs would really help people out.

Dick DeRyk 33:13

What's ahead for Bruno's place and for SIGN Housing Support?

Angela Chernoff 33:18

We just had a recent expansion of 10 beds to 20 beds so that was incredibly significant for us with our facility we can't go beyond 20 beds at this point. So we're not looking at that we would have to be putting in new bathrooms and showers to expand I think the expansion right now for us is just more going to be in the programming that we offer like we've gotten two NA meetings going and we've brought in a new counseling service on Wednesdays and so getting that rotation of visiting professionals is our focus right now. And keeping people occupied and busy with programming seems to be the best for them rather than sitting around. Beyond that I think I would just like to see more happen with transitional housing so people don't have to be sitting here for so long. But that right now that's not something that I we can solve on our own here at Bruno's place.

Martha Gares 34:15

We're really looking to the city and the social housing committee to come up with something you know as a community and Martha there's uh two of you and housing support you and Rebecca what are your immediate needs or what else can you do and what would it take again I think one of the most major things for us is the income assistance rates because we know even if we can get people onto income assistance while they still can't afford rental housing and we've talked about employment that's just not always an option for our clients so income assistance rates definitely can hold back our clients quite a bit and just the general low vacancy rates I think it's always a concern the lack of knowledge of renters and landlords. So we are really trying to push to do some more education even just for the general public you know it's not something that seems to be touched on in schools we just kind of throw people onto their own at 18 or whenever they graduate high school a lot of them end up moving into rental housing and yet they have no idea what their rights are, what their responsibilities are, what the landlord's responsibilities and that can really lead to a lot of difficulty down the line and we get a lot of calls with issues about you know I'm gonna be evicted I haven't paid my rent so we would really like to see kind of a more educated society in general and landlords really held accountable to make sure that their units are in good condition. They know their responsibilities as the landlord even if people get into rental housing sometimes the condition is just deplorable but if that's your only option what are you going to do return to the streets it happens on both ends. And again I think unfortunately a lot of it is really just a lack of understanding of what my responsibilities are on both ends. And that's a limitation of our program because we don't have financial assistance. We can't provide the landlords a guarantee that if things go poorly with this tenant, you know it's okay, we'll pay for any damages that's not something we can do. So landlords are always taking a big risk if they're agreeing to rent to someone who doesn't have a good rental history, doesn't have references, um hasn't spent a lot of time in rental housing it might even be their first time renting we know it happens on both ends. So we're really hoping to improve knowledge of what the rights and responsibilities are and who to call because it can be very confusing if you're talking about you know something simple that you just need to contact the landlord about or maybe suddenly there's a bylaw issue. Maybe you're having an issue with your neighbor. These can be complicated things to navigate especially if it's for the first time.