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March 2004
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Shelters in the Storm: The Story Behind the Headlines by Gwen O'Reilly First, a little history: There are five women’s shelters in the District of Thunder Bay - three in Thunder Bay, one run by the municipality in Geraldton (Gerald Family Resource Centre) and one independent facility in Marathon (Marjorie House). Initiated by community efforts, Community Residence Women’s Shelter came under City control in 1975. Unlike the other shelters, CRWS has always had a mandate to house homeless women and children, as well as City women leaving violent relationships. Beendigen was established in 1976 by Thunder Bay Anishnabequek, so that Aboriginal women fleeing abuse would not have to deal with the stress of a non-Aboriginal environment. Faye Peterson was first established in 1983 after a community group had concerns about the adequacy of service at the time for women survivors of violence at CRWS. Until now, Faye Peterson has served mostly regional women and those from remote communities. Both Beendigen and Faye Peterson are funded and designed only to house women fleeing abuse. You’ve read the headlines - the City of Thunder Bay says the Ministry of Community and Social Services is closing Community Residence Women’s Shelter. This is a bit of an oversimplification. Closure of a local shelter is a symptom arising from a complex interaction of factors, including longstanding inaction on the part of the City administration and a direct attempt by government bureaucracy to restructure and control shelters in the North. More accurately, the Ministry is withdrawing the provincial funding pot from the City, an amount that has barely managed to support the aging and understaffed facility since 1997, when the City stopped contributing their share to it’s operation. The Ministry is redirecting these funds into expanded services at Faye Peterson and Beendigen shelters. Unfortunately, no one is taking leadership to replace services for homeless and other women requiring shelter previously provided by CRWS. Part of this issue has arisen because funders make an artificial distinction among women at risk. Money for women and children who are homeless comes from one source, funding for women and children fleeing abuse (referred to as VAW) from another. Anyone who works with women understands that homelessness often has it’s roots in violence, and either classification may apply to the same woman at different times in her life (perhaps even within months). That being said, shelters will tell you that homeless women generally represent a different population than women fleeing abuse, and that the two groups do not mix very well in the same space. Community Residence was able to deal with this issue, because the shelter included four separate buildings. So, from my perspective, there are two culprits in this caper, City administration and MCSS bureaucrats. The City has relied on the provincial funding for too long without taking financial responsibility to provide adequate or safe services, and has done little to create a strong and responsive service for women at risk. MCSS has taken advantage of the local disparity between shelter services to divide and conquer in this District, but they have their sights set on the whole Region and beyond. There are also at least two separate political issues in this mix - the ownership of responsibility for serving homeless women and children, and the institutionalization of autonomous services for women and children surviving violence. How did this happen? Employees at CRWS had long identified the need for a new building and additional funding for staffing, but their various requests for capital dollars were denied. A consultant was hired to study the situation, in an attempt to make the need for new funding public and obvious. The consultant’s study of CRWS identified the staffing, maintenance, safety, security and governance problems resulting from the aging facility, chronic underfunding, separate buildings and control by the City. It also enumerated the numbers of homeless women and the growing number of Aboriginal women using their services. The examination triggered a Fire Marshall’s inspection, which subsequently declared the existing occupancy unsafe, and resulted in the official reduction of original capacity from 30 beds to 22. (Same amount of funding, fewer beds) Unfortunately, the original intentions of the study backfired. The report confirmed the Ministry’s concerns that CRWS was outside their now fairly narrow funding agenda, was at risk for liability and was difficult to administer because it fell under the City’s control. At the same time, the MCSS was paying attention to the fact that Beendigen was operating a facility too small to meet a growing need. No one could deny that there was an urgent need for an expansion of services for Aboriginal women. MCSS knew that CRWS was vulnerable, and would be difficult to defend. It was an opportunity to reduce the number of funded organizations in the District under the guise of restructuring. CRWS had been warned by MCSS about using provincial money to house a variety of women in need (women fleeing abuse, but also homeless and hard to house women, and women between addictions and other residential programs). The artificial funding distinction between Violence Against Women dollars and money for homeless services gave them an official rationale to withdraw VAW funding from CRWS. The issue for women’s advocates was that the MCSS scarcity model was forcing our community to choose between the needs of homeless women and Aboriginal women, instead of addressing them both. Because the City has been unwilling or unable to come forward and assume financial responsibility for at least part of the operation, withdrawal of provincial funding has resulted in closure. This didn’t have to happen - there are other women’s shelters in Ontario who run jointly (municipal and provincial) funded operations to house a variety of women at risk under both funding categories. There has been an historic division over CRWS between City council and City administration, since it first came under their control in 1975. Early in the 1990's, City administration offered control of CRWS to Faye Peterson House, but were refused. During recent negotiations, City admin once again offered 5 homeless “beds” to Faye Peterson and were again refused. Unfortunately, this offer was never been extended to Beendigen, who have the interest and the capacity to do something with it. During restructuring negotiations, CRWS could have bought time and Ministry support by offering some of it’s funding allocation (i.e. beds) to Beendigen, who have struggled to meet the needs of Aboriginal women with only 10 provincially funded beds for the last 25 years. They chose not to do this, and withdrew from the process completely without trying to develop solidarity with the other shelters involved. This was a tactic that played into the Ministry’s hands, perhaps intentionally. By doing nothing, the City had no action to defend, and when MCSS withdrew the funding their response was simply to direct the blame at the provincial government. It was a golden opportunity to dump CRWS and not have to take the heat for a controversial decision. A provincial plan to restructure Violence Against Women services started with the Conservative government’s MacGuire Report, which was resoundingly rejected by stakeholders. A new report was drafted called Making Services Work for People, which contained the elements of a plan to increase government control of violence against women’s services, including shelters. In 2001 (under the Conservatives), Ministry of Community, Family and Children’s Services started to implement a restructuring process that involved any VAW services funded by them. This artificial grouping captured women’s shelters and family counselling agencies in the District, and MCFCS brought these groups together with a predetermined agenda and told them they had to participate in designing their own restructured funding arrangement. These community based services were told that they were obligated by their contractual agreements with the Province to engage in these negotiations. Community stakeholders, women’s and shelter advocates were not included in this clandestine review of local service. This process was completely driven by the Ministry, who tried to spin it as a community driven initiative. Unfortunately, bureaucrats under the new Liberal government appear to be continuing with the same plan, despite supportive noises from the Premier’s office. Previous to this process, the funding category of “bed” for shelters did not exist, and there was no awareness that a “bed” (approx. 30,000 per year in provincial funding, according to the government’s unwritten formula) was a commodity that a) had a fixed value, regardless of variations in shelter overhead; or b) could be moved around from shelter to shelter. Commodification of shelter services is part of the plan to make services such as counselling, crisis lines, and shelter portable, and therefore easy to move around. Most shelters are autonomous organizations, started by women, run by community boards. They have fixed costs associated with any agency that has to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They provide support to women, education and action against violence in their communities. Making Services Work For People sees a future where governments would administer these discrete, “unbundled” services through a hierarchical structure using a “Service System Management” model. You can bet that the commitment to funding capital and overhead costs will be diminished. What about the Regional shelters? This funding arrangement will have larger implications for small shelters in the Region. They typically have lower occupancy rates, simply because of smaller populations. This has previously been used to pressure shelters to share services with others. The Ministry is currently using this occupancy rate as a way to rationalize cutting or restructuring funding in these areas, and has introduced the fascinating concept of “flex beds”. A low occupancy rate does not mean services are not needed, nor does it mean a shelter’s overhead costs are “flexible”. What Now? There are a number of things to be done to address this problems. Restoring funding to CRWS is no longer possible. Both Beendigen and Faye Peterson need community support in their transition to becoming larger facilities. There are those who would like to lay the blame for the closure of CRWS at their feet. We need to also pay attention to what is happening with shelters in smaller communities like Marathon and Geraldton. And when it comes to addressing the needs of homeless women, we’re on our own - neither the City nor the Ministry is going to take this on. It’s going to require what every women’s service has always required - a bunch of stubborn, noisy women to come forward and develop a plan of our own. Call me if you’re interested. |