Federal funding helping Greater Sudbury address homelessness, add shelter spaces

The federal government is helping the City of Greater Sudbury address homelessness through funding to help with the addition of more shelter spaces and warming centres.

Liberal MP for Sudbury, Viviane Lapointe announced that Ottawa is providing $8,457,271 in funding to the city to help the municipality cope with the homelessness crisis. Sudbury has seen the number of unhoused people rise over the past three years.

The investment includes $1,532,256 over two years through the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampments Initiative, which will help support activities under a Community Engagement Response Plan. The plan includes the additional warming centre services at Energy Court and the Samaritan Centre over the winter months that were added at the start of the season.

The remainder of the funds, $6,925,015 over four years, is coming through the Reaching Home: Designated Communities fund, which will assist the city in continuing to offer more shelter support.

"This funding will directly support community-based efforts to provide warmth, safety, and stability for vulnerable homeless adults and youth," said Lapointe in a statement. 

"By expanding the capacity of warming centres, outreach services and shelters, we are working to improve the lives of people in our city."

A portion of the $6 million investment is going to the Elizabeth Fry Society's Safe Harbour House, a low barrier emergency shelter for adult women and gender-diverse people. The organization, which recently opened a new, larger location on Cedar Street in December, has added 16 more shelter beds to its services for a total of 26.

"The need has certainly grown over time," said Cory Roslyn, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society. 

"It didn't take long when we opened Safe Harbour House at our old location in 2021 for those 10 beds to fill up. But since we've been here for just over a month, we're almost full again at 26 beds. And so that really shows us the need that exists in our community and our organization."

Safe Harbour House is also expanding its services to include homeless female youth between the ages of 16 and 18, which will help to fill a gap in youth services left behind with last year's closure of the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth (SACY).

"It is a real shame that SACY had to close and that gap was created," said Roslyn. 

"So really, what we're doing is just responding to that need. And girls 16, 17, 18-years-old really are probably the most vulnerable group that we work with at Elizabeth Fry. And so it was important to us to be able to expand and offer that safety for them."

Roslyn added that despite additional shelter and transitional housing spaces being added in the city, what is really needed is more permanent, affordable housing to solve the housing and homelessness crises.

That's something the city is working on as it continues to try and reach its goal of ending homelessness by 2030, according to Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre. He says the city is in a better position now than it was 18 months ago.

"I think we're in a better spot. That being said, the challenge remains and sometimes it's trying to find apartments for our most vulnerable," said Lefebvre. 

"We're really trying to focus on that, certainly on the coldest nights of the year that we've been seeing. So a lot of effort has been going on in the past number of years to do this and we're going to keep going."