Chatham-Kent is making good use of $761,000 in provincial funding to help the community’s most vulnerable through the pandemic.
The government recently announced $241-million province-wide from Ontario’s Social Services Relief Fund to help deal with homelessness and other housing needs.
Locally, the funding is being used for emergency and transitional housing in area motels, along with food programs, extra PPE, COVID safety measures and cleaning supplies for social and non-profit housing, as well as funding to help people pay arrears to stay housed, or to secure affordable housing.
“At any given time, 50 homeless people are provided emergency housing in motel rooms funded through this program. Some funding is used for rent supplements to make private market rental units affordable for lower income people,” says Polly Smith, Director of Employment & Social Services. “Further funding is ear-marked for feeding programs through the winter as this is expected to a serious concern despite all of the excellent work done by groups like May 16th Miracle, Free Help CK, Rock Missions, Street Friends, Hope Haven, Neighbourlink, Salvation Army, United Way and the Prosperity Round Table.”
As many as 150 people in Chatham-Kent are listed as homeless, all of whom are connected to services to become housed. Community partners have said the number of homeless people could be more like 300 with ‘couch surfing’ and other precarious accommodations, and believe about 25 people are living rough, mostly outdoors.
Smith says while homelessness is a very challenging issue with limited resources, the good news is that each month about 20 people in Chatham-Kent go from homelessness to permanent housing through the CK Cares coordinated access program that Employment and Social Services operates with community partners like CMHA, House of Sophrosyne, and Salvation Army.
