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Cornerstone Housing for Women will be changing locations and and increasing its number of available beds for homeless women and gender-diverse people as Ottawa continues to grapple with a housing and homelessness crisis.
Cornerstone’s new location, the former site of the Carling Family Shelter on Carling Avenue, will increase the shelter’s capacity by 145 per cent, its beds increasing from 61 to 150. The new shelter space will also have an additional 15 beds for overflow shelter spaces when other women’s shelters in the city are full.
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Martine Dore, the director of programs and services, says the new location means Cornerstone can “live out our ideals of trauma-informed care and respectful spaces.”
The previous location on O’Connor Street served its purpose for many years, “but it was not a trauma-informed care environment,” she said, referring to narrow, windy hallways that could make people feel trapped or vulnerable.
The new location is open and airy with good sight lines, a “far more uplifting” space for women and gender non-conforming people, many of whom have experienced significant trauma, Dore said.
Dore said women and gender non-conforming people who were homeless were more likely to live with mood disorders, mental health issues or physical ailments as well as having experienced significant trauma.
“That is not to diminish what men go through,” she said, “but, of course, because of the prevalence of gender-based violence, women’s experience with trauma is significant.”
A trauma-informed lens addresses everything from “What does the environment look like? How do we speak to someone? What language do we use? What is going on around them in any given space? Do people feel unsafe in a space, trapped? Is the space oppressive?” Dore said.
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Once the move is complete, Cornerstone will be the city’s largest shelter for women and gender-diverse adults. Dore said scaling up its space by 145 per cent was both wonderful and sad.
“It’s sad that there is a need for that many, but there is,” she said. “That is the reality.”
At the location on O’Connor, some people have been turned away, she said, and, while Cornerstone works to find them alternate accommodations, “we’ve gotten to the point in this city where there’s just no viable options.”
Turning away people in need is not only “horrendous for the person on the street looking for a safe place to be,” but also morally distressing to staff, she added.
The Carling location will have more space for services, including case management, housing support, counselling, health care, harm reduction, food, laundry and more, meaning those services will operate “with a vastly increased capacity.”
The Carling location is accessible, too, with an elevator, large hallways and a common room allowing Cornerstone to serve 70 individuals at a time.
Its 61 residents will be moved from the current location at the end of April, and the remaining 89 beds will be filled on a “phased-in” approach, a prepared statement said.
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