Ottawa, 25 November 2024 – Today, Women’s Shelters Canada (WSC) released Shelter Voices 2024: Crisis Within Crisis. This issue of Shelter Voices, funded by The Royal LePage Shelter Foundation, was designed to contribute to a better understanding of the housing crisis and its impact on shelters/THs, including individuals working in these spaces and survivors accessing supports. Among respondents, 99.5% felt that their community was facing a housing crisis, with 97% indicating that over the preceding 12 months it had become harder to support survivors to find housing.

“These findings have confirmed what we’ve been hearing anecdotally from women’s shelters across the country for years,” said Anuradha Dugal, executive director of Women’s Shelters Canada. “Since there’s no affordable housing, women are staying in shelters longer, which increases turn-away rates. It creates a bottleneck effect where new women can’t move in if women already in shelter have nowhere to go.”

While the majority of organizations have length of stay policies, only 3% abide by those timelines. Worryingly, compared to last year, respondents reported that more survivors are leaving shelter for housing that does not meet their needs, is not safe, is unaffordable, and/or often contributes to cycling back into a VAW shelter. Some survivors are choosing to return to abusers rather than face homelessness. When survivors are faced with such decisions, their stress escalates, and their well-being suffers; 92% of respondents had seen survivors’ stress increase due to the housing crisis. Staff are also seeing decreases in their mental health due to the housing crisis.

“This is the 10th anniversary of Shelter Voices. We’ve been talking about the lack of safe, affordable housing since our first edition in 2014,” said Dugal. “We need change. We desperately need adequate funding for affordable housing that is specifically allocated for women and children fleeing violence.”

Yet despite all the challenges, shelters continue their lifesaving work by offering a range of supports to help people find housing and advocate for more housing options for survivors. Some organizations are responding to the housing crisis and the demand for shelter services by working to expand the number of units and/or shelters across the country. Women’s Shelters Canada is supporting the new builds of second stage transitional housing across the country, with the first project officially opening on Wednesday, November 27.

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For media enquiries, contact:
Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich, Director of Communications and Advocacy
kbardswich@endvaw.ca

Women’s Shelters Canada brings together 16 provincial and territorial shelter organizations and supports the over 600 shelters across the country for women and children fleeing violence. If you or someone you know is experiencing violence, you can find your nearest women’s shelter and its crisis line on www.sheltersafe.ca.