The federal government has added more than $500,000 in funding for a program to help secure additional space in shelters that serve Guelph and Wellington County during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A $562,000 increase raises the total amount available locally to $720,000.
Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield announced the increase in local funding on his Twitter account on Sunday.
Reached by phone Monday, Longfield said the funding will help the County of Wellington and Guelph to continue the work of placing people into hotel rooms or into living units where they are more isolated from each other during the pandemic.
“They are at particular risk because it’s hard for them to isolate,” said Longfield.
Although Longfield hasn't been travelling to Ottawa to attend the few meetings of parliament that have happened, he has been participating in nightly video calls.
“We are looking at ways of doing virtual parliament now,” said Longfield. “The speaker is working on that now.”
The $720,000 in funding under the Reaching Home Project represents Wellington County and Guelph’s share of the $157.5 million in additional funding being made available nationwide under the program.
Homeless shelters in Guelph are funded through the County of Wellington. The county was informed about the funding on Friday.
Decisions on exactly how the funding will be used are still being finalized, said Lori Richer, housing stability manager with County of Wellington Social Services.
The county's share of the Reaching Home funding before the increase was $158,000.
"The funding announcement by Lloyd is new funding being provided to our community on top of existing funding," said Richer. "This funding is integral for us to continue to support our community partners to deliver services to the most vulnerable individuals in our community including things like moving the shelters to hotels, the isolation site, supporting people to maintain their housing, and continuing to work towards securing permanent housing solutions."
She said the funding has a great deal of flexibility and can be used on expenses like:
- securing additional accommodation to reduce overcrowding in shelters
- purchasing supplies and materials to reduce the risk of transmission, such as personal protective equipment for staff
- increasing the frequency of cleaning with disinfectants in high traffic areas
- securing sufficient accommodation to quarantine individuals infected
- purchasing beds and physical barriers to place between beds in newly purposed facilities
- staff hours to operate these new facilities
On March 27, GuelphToday reported that 37 people had been moved from homeless shelters in Guelph into a hotel. On Monday Richer said that number of rooms at the hotel has increased 42 rooms.
She notes other hotels spread across the city are also available as part of its regular shelter overflow.
In addition, a three-room Supported Isolation Site opened last month at the Welcome In Drop In Centre has limited capacity.
“Community partners are working with Ignatius Centre to move the Supported Isolation Site to Loyola House,” said Richer.
Longfield said he hopes the additional funding can continue after the COVID-19 crisis is over to help create longer term homelessness solutions in Guelph and Wellington County.
“It would be really good to look at this as whatever we are doing now that there is a longer term impact. If we can look at a solution that will work during the crisis but also work after the crisis,” said Longfield. “If you do this right you do a whole bunch of other stuff right.”
Longfield said the federal government is also working on plans specifically for women’s shelters, which he hopes will benefit Women in Crisis and Michael House locally.
“For women whose home isn’t a safe place and now they are being asked to be isolated in a place that isn’t safe — we are trying to bring that program forward,” said Longfield.
