homelessness Archives — Lindsay Advocate

Private hotel rooms for homeless shelter clients make it difficult to ‘move people along’

Published on January 12, 2021 in Social Issues by Roderick Benns

Some of the people who find themselves homeless — and at the doors of A Place Called Home in Lindsay — are not wanting to move along quite as fast these days.

Given the shortage of available affordable housing, the new place they secure with APCH’s help is often just a room at a boarding house. Now, though, with APCH working primarily out of the Knight’s Inn in Lindsay, each person is assigned their own hotel room – a level of privacy that many don’t want to give up, according to executive director David Tilley.

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A Place Called Home moves towards housing continuum model

Published on December 18, 2020 in Community/Social Issues by Jessica Topfer

A Place Called Home (APCH) is at a critical turning point.

Their 19-bed homeless shelter was already at 100 per cent capacity when the first wave of COVID-19 necessitated they move their clients into motel rooms.

Now the number of individuals in their care hovers around 50 people.

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Housing at 68 Lindsay Street deemed “a success”

Published on December 18, 2020 in Municipal/Social Issues by Kirk Winter

New housing complex should be for rehab, not ‘condoning drugs’: Woman’s petition

There’s simply no doubt that the geared-to-income housing at 68 Lindsay Street has been a success, according to a recent report made to council.

Hope Lee, CEO of Kawartha Lakes Haliburton Housing, reported that their newest building at the corner of Lindsay and Queen Streets has been a success by any commonly used metrics.

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City to receive $1.75 million in ‘social services relief fund’ from province

Published on October 27, 2020 in Community/Provincial by Lindsay Advocate

MPP Laurie Scott has announced that Kawartha Lakes will receive $1,750,249 as part of Phase 2 of the social services relief fund to expand and renovate A Place Called Home in Lindsay. The renovation includes building a new 19-bed shelter along with five new affordable housing units, one four-bedroom house and four one-bedroom apartments.

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Pandemic shows true picture of homelessness in Kawartha Lakes

Published on September 10, 2020 in Community by Denis Grignon

On the surface, it would seem that the pandemic created a surge in homelessness in Kawartha Lakes. Indeed, A Place Called Home did see its client base increase three-fold since COVID, says its interim executive director, David Tilley.

As reported in The Advocate earlier this week safety protocols at the start of the pandemic lead to the closure of the agency’s 19-bed shelter. This meant relocating those residents – and any new, additional ones – into local motels. Since then, the agency is consistently providing rooms for between 45 and 55 individuals.

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Homeless shelter needs re-imagining, says city manager

Published on September 7, 2020 in Municipal by Kirk Winter

Hope Lee, manager of human services–housing, shared a report with council laying out in stark terms the homelessness crisis in Kawartha Lakes, and how it has been affected by the pandemic.

She also shared how a re-imagination of A Place Called Home, the area’s only homeless shelter, might positively impact the number of beds available for those who have nowhere to go.

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A Place Called Home: 25 years of fighting for justice for people who are homeless

Published on March 16, 2020 in Community/Social Issues by Zita Devan

It was a chance meeting on a Monday in 1985 that would alter my life path for good. The meeting was with a young man with curly blond hair who, in many ways, looked very much like one of my own teenage sons. I was working at Fleming College at the time, coordinating a government program to help youth who had left high school and lacked job experience.

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More children than adults at A Place Called Home this Christmas

Published on December 3, 2019 in Community/Social Issues by Roderick Benns

The sound of children’s voices during the holidays typically conjures feelings of warmth and sentimentality – unless, of course, those voices are in a homeless shelter.

It’s a jarring mental image but one that A Place Called Home in Lindsay is being forced to contemplate.

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From homelessness in Toronto to housing in Lindsay

Published on September 23, 2019 in Community/Social Issues by John Clapp

Journey of homelessness, poor mental health, leaves man regretting checkered life

Canada is in the grip of an affordable housing crisis. Large municipalities like Toronto are especially hard hit with primary vacancy rates as low as 1.1%. The average cost of a one bedroom apartment has nearly doubled from $1,400 a month in 2009 to $2,400 in 2019. Many working class Torontonians are paying 60% or more of their incomes on rent — and homelessness is becoming more common as a result.

Low income people like me are even more adversely affected by the affordable housing crisis than working class people are.

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Housing and mental health supported by CKL-Trent University partnership

Published on September 9, 2019 in Municipal by Lindsay Advocate

Over the past three years, Trent University and the municipality of Kawartha Lakes have partnered to create an Intensive Case Management Evaluation Report for Kawartha Lakes. Intensive Case Management (ICM) is an approach to supporting clients with complex needs in terms of housing and mental health. The Evaluation Report found that the ICM program results in better quality of life for clients, more sustainable service delivery and increased satisfaction in housing.

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