Stories have long been told of how Stepping Stone shelters are unsafe, regularly hit capacity and turn away those in need. For executive director Gail Hoekstra, it’s time to clear up what she believes to be major misconceptions around the work they do.
There has been much confusion about these topics among both community and council members in the last year, which Hoekstra said is largely due to people relying on rumours and not going straight to the source.
“We are an easy organization to blame for homelessness, or their experience. I will always right away own it – this is going to be a tough site. But we have space for everyone and we’re not turning anyone away.”
Stepping Stone consists of emergency shelters at 23 Gordon St., Norfolk Manor, two family shelters and supportive housing at Grace Gardens.
The site at 23 Gordon St. is a low-barrier emergency shelter with 27 beds and 20 cots. Bunk beds line the main room, and there are some side rooms with two beds each – some on cots, some on small frames.
Doors open at 8 p.m. every night.
Each person gets a pillow and blanket, if there are enough. They get coffee in the morning before they have to leave at 8 a.m.
“This is the lowest barrier site, so (it sees the most instances of) mental health, probably addiction, those kinds of things. Given that that’s the case here, it runs very smoothly,” said program supervisor Kyle Crann. “Obviously it’s not perfect.”
The site has the fewest rules of all the other shelters in the area, but does have rules to follow, including a two-bag limit and zero tolerance for threats and discrimination.
“There’s nothing that’s a high barrier,” he said. “We don’t ever want to have to restrict people, and the rules reflect that.”
Service Restrictions, or temporary bans
Hoekstra said this is one of the biggest sources of misconceptions around the sites: that staff are too trigger happy when it comes to restricting people.
In the last year, 23 Gordon St. has seen 383 unique clients (a number expected to climb to 417 by the end of the year). Among those clients, there have been 92 service restrictions, or temporary bans. But only 29 unique clients have received them, meaning the bulk are repeat restrictions.
The restrictions are progressive, and can start at either a break (less than 24 hours away from the service) or a 24-hour restriction. The amount of time grows depending on repeat behaviour or the severity of the incident.
“Almost all restrictions start at one day, then they can go to three days, and gradually increase from there,” Crann said.
“The biggest issue that we run into is repeat behaviour. If someone is breaking the rules, assuming that it is something workable, a behavioural contract can get given to them and identifies what the issue is. A clinician or someone will meet with them and say, if it happens again, you’re gone,” he said.
The average short-term restriction time is 2.18 days.
Access to Stepping Stone services can be restricted for a set amount of time due to a particular incident, behaviour, or failure to meet program expectations. That might include repeated or escalated non-physical violence like harassment or racism, threats, drug manufacturing, buying or dealing.
The bans are “implemented sparingly and with caution. They should not be seen as punitive but rather rehabilitative and restorative.”
After a lengthy restriction period (two weeks or more), the participant is required to set up a meeting with Stepping Stone for intake and to discuss terms and conditions in order to return.
Participants also have the option to appeal a restriction.
When extreme heat and cold weather procedures are in effect, however, all service restrictions are temporarily suspended, unless someone poses an immediate threat to staff or participants.
Maintaining confidentiality at the cost of public perception
Crann also noted the restrictions are never given out arbitrarily.
Police arrived at 23 Gordon St. while GuelphToday was there, asking one woman to leave and not come back for three nights due to an outburst the night prior. While she said she wasn’t at fault and didn’t do anything wrong, staff said there is always more to the story they can’t share due to confidentiality reasons.
“We respect confidentiality, so we don’t share all that information with community partners. They hear about the restriction, but they can’t hear the details behind it” – even if there is video footage that backs it up.
In one instance, he said community partners were reaching out to him saying a particular restriction wasn’t fair. What they didn’t know was that the guest had assaulted a staff member.
“I wasn’t able to say they chased our staff down with a pipe and beat his face,” he said.
“It’s really difficult dispelling some of that community talk. A lot of it is just misinformation, (people being) frustrated, so they get the blame assigned elsewhere.”
Hoekstra agreed, and said the story often gets blown out of proportion or spreads without necessary context.
“It becomes, Stepping Stone has restricted me. And sometimes it’s not even the case.”
The restrictions are also progressive.
“That’s another misconception I hear in the community,” Crann said, referencing talk of lengthy restrictions being dished out arbitrarily.
Often, the person has only been restricted for a night, he said, or they had several restrictions in a row, with the length growing each time.
Racial discrimination is a common cause of repeat bans, and is something they’re trying to work on with the community.
But Crann said it’s tough finding the balance between keeping people warm and maintaining the safety inside.
“Our trend is being a lot more lenient in the winter. There’s not a great answer. The incidents we see a lot of times at our site, anywhere else someone would be charged. It’s really tough when we’re the very last resort.”
Hoekstra encouraged community partners to call Stepping Stone when they hear about restrictions and the reasons behind them, “because it’s probably not the case, and we’re happy to make a plan.”
Is there enough space for everyone in the shelter?
Hoekstra said they “will accept everybody that needs a spot for the night,” as long as that person is from Guelph and doesn’t interfere with the safety of others.
In past years the shelter has reached capacity during the winter, but last year decided it would make room no matter what. Even so, Hoekstra can’t remember the last time they actually hit capacity. The highest last winter was mid-40s, and this year so far they’ve seen a few nights with around 35 people.
When the public space use bylaw came into effect and the encampment at St. George’s Square was removed, she said people were also upset because there was no place for them to go. But there was.
“For everyone that was downtown, we did make sure there was a space at our 24/7 supportive shelter, and for anyone coming in from outside or encampments, making sure they have a place to go.”
Most of those who were living in the downtown encampment are actually staying at Norfolk Manor in their own private room and working with staff to find housing placements.
You can read more about the number of shelter beds in Guelph here.
What about safety?
Crann said previous incidents have left people feeling like the shelter is unsafe, even though not all of the incidents have taken place inside.
“People have been hurt, which is unfortunate,” he said. “There was also a stabbing that happened in front of the building, and it wasn’t a client that was using our services. Big incidents like that really spark people not feeling safe.”
Often the incidents are spurred by mental health.
“It kind of goes with the low-barrier,” he said.
In those instances, he said CMHA often helps put together a safety plan for bringing someone back and identifying triggers or particular de-escalation techniques.
“We’re doing what we can. It’s just really difficult when addiction meets mental health and homelessness. People are coming here at the worst time of their life, and they act accordingly sometimes.”
Tammy Fox, 54, has been coming to the shelter for the last few weeks. How safe she feels in the shelter depends on who is there that night.
“There’s a lot of people here with mental issues. When they go off, it doesn’t feel safe,” she said, adding that staff don’t do much when outbursts happen.
The outbursts are hard on 63-year-old Chris, too, who has recently been staying in the shelter after losing his place.
“For the most part, people are trying to maintain their sanity. But there’s always a handful every night that just have to scream and bark at the moon, and make it real difficult on everybody else trying to sleep.”
“It’s hard on me because I’m old and trying to recover. Everybody blames the guys at the front desk, but there’s only so much they can do.”
As an organization, Stepping Stone is funded to “provide shelter, which is an entry level job based on an older model of homelessness being a simple experience that would resolve quickly,” Hoekstra said.
“Over the years, the increase in complexity of the addiction, mental health and behavioural issues for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness has created a new reality in the shelter system.”
While she said staff are “always engaged in any training opportunities that are available,” they need more health funding for those supports to be embedded into programs.
“If we could have the right supports at the right time we could really help people in the best way possible towards both their housing and health goals.
“There is an assumption that the program and staffing model is unsafe rather than the reality that on any given night the combination of individuals sharing a space going through a stressful time can feel unsafe to any given individual depending on their own story,” Hoekstra said.
“There and many times people often go between sleeping outdoors and coming in for colder nights to shelter. These are often not either/or realities,” she added.
Hoekstra said she’s hoping to work with community partners in the coming weeks to develop specific support plans for people struggling to access services because of behaviour.
“Can we work on, basically, a restorative pathway to create a solution or support around that person that’s not just an organization restricting them,” she said.
More than just shelter beds
As an organization, Stepping Stone has three teams: Diversion and rapid rehousing, an outreach team, and a housing stability team.
The first focuses on keeping people housed who are at risk of losing their housing or are experiencing homelessness less than six months before being housed. The outreach team focuses on helping those sleeping in encampments or outdoors to get housed, and the housing stability team helps people get housing from shelter locations.
All workers connect with financial supports like rent subsidies through the county, work with landlords and support tenants in their path to housing stability once they are housed.
In the last year, Stepping Stone has made 198 housing placements, including 36 people from encampments – a 33 per cent increase from last year (more on this in an upcoming article).
“As a community we need to continue to work towards more permanent supportive housing as well as increase scattered site deeply affordable housing options with attached supports,” Hoekstra said. “We have already starting doing more in this area than in many other communities.
“Our community advocacy needs to be towards creating housing, adequate health supports attached to housing and increasing basic income. Any other advocacy is a distraction."
What’s next?
“(Emergency shelter) isn’t the goal, it’s the starting point. The goal is housing, health and being surrounded by community,” Hoekstra said.
“We built Grace Gardens because we know the other solution to homelessness is permanent supportive housing, especially for the population that struggles the most.”
Other barriers have also included a no pets rule and couples not being able to bunk together, both of which she said they’re testing out at Norfolk Manor.
They’re hoping to introduce services for outflow clients once people who have been housed, “because people that are housed are often quite lonely,” she said.
“What we really want to keep developing is keeping in touch with the people that are housed to have a place where they can come and have coffee, still build friendships (and maintain the ones they’ve made).”
When renovations at 23 Gordon are done, there will be a shelter on the first and second floor and transitional housing on the third.
They are also hoping to open a portion of the first floor for daytime space from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. to complement the overnight hours.
“We are hoping to provide housing and health focused supports in this space with the focus on individuals experiencing homelessness,” Hoekstra said. “We will have a commercial kitchen, showers, bathrooms, laundry and a community gathering area. We are currently not funded for this space so we are looking towards funding opportunities.”
“We know it is not perfect but it is important to us that we were able to continue to provide shelter even though the entire building is getting redone."
