Couples not allowed into Hamilton's emergency shelters due to rise in domestic violence

Couples won't be allowed into Hamilton's emergency shelters because the city says it's doing a safety review after a rise in "incidents of concern ... including domestic violence."

But one doctor who works with the homeless population says that's the wrong move — particularly in winter. 

The city says it'll try to open up space for single women, and is asking men to use available spaces in the men's system. It also says it will try to help couples who still want to find permanent housing together. 

But right now, the city says, "hotel-based temporary emergency shelter spaces do not have the resources to adequately support couples together experiencing domestic violence, nor those experiencing acute mental health and addictions related challenges."

"Today's decision, which is effective immediately, follows multiple incidents of concern raised by providers, including multiple incidents of domestic violence in hotels providing shelter in the past two weeks alone," the city said in a media release Tuesday afternoon.

The safety review, the city says, will consider advice from Indigenous partners and local organizations to ensure women's safety. It says it will also consider "evidence-informed best practices to implement system-wide domestic violence risk assessments."

'Are they just supposed to stop existing?' doctor says

This comes as the city has struggled to find a fix to encampment issues for more than a year.

Dr. Jill Wiwcharuk, a member of Hamilton Social Medicine Response Team (Hamsmart), said the city's decision to shut out all couples because of violence among some will lead to "tragic losses of life."

"If there is domestic violence among some couples [in shelters] ... it's not like it only starts happening when they go into shelter ... it's just the city saying 'we don't want to see it, we don't want to have to deal with it, we don't want to have to help,'" she said.

"Where do you want these people to go? Are they just supposed to stop existing? That's how it feels to them."

Wiwcharuk points out more and more people are becoming homeless for the first time in their lives, and a blanket ban doesn't consider their needs. She said also doesn't consider the needs of those who may be restricted from various shelters for numerous reasons, like owning a pet.

"It's incredibly discriminatory and is likely to cause a whole other layer of trauma for people who will be forced to separate from, sometimes, the one person that provides them with mental health support or a sense of safety," she said.

"No one can tell me that someone is somehow safer when they are sleeping outside in the snow with someone in a domestic violence situation as opposed to indoors with other people around them who care for their safety."

Shelter space for couples and women has already been hard to find in Hamilton. Wiwcharuk said the city took too long to acknowledge there aren't enough shelter beds, only doing so in October.

Before the pandemic, the city said, there wasn't any shelter dedicated to couples.

It also said Tuesday that it's calling on higher levels of government to address what falls out of the city's purview, "including the provision of adequate acute mental health and addictions supports, and increasing access to domestic violence supports that can make it difficult for individuals to secure and maintain housing."