Homelessness is in every Windsor ward and neighbourhood — not just downtown — this city official says

There are at least 700 households in Windsor-Essex experiencing homelessness — and those may only be the ones officials can count. 

As affordable housing becomes increasingly difficult to find, it's a reality people are facing and the evidence isn't just downtown, but in every neighbourhood and ward across the city and county. 

LISTEN: Kelly Goz on homelessness, encampments and how Windsor fares compared to other cities

Windsor Morning8:10Homelessness and encampments

Kelly Goz, the city's acting manager of homelessness and housing support, says there are two encampments the city is aware of — but with 700 people or more facing homelessness, the rest, she says, may be in shelters, hospitals, staying with family or friends or even sleeping outdoors alone. 

CBC Windsor Morning host Amy Dodge spoke with Goz about where people are and what Windsorites can do to help.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

So how would you describe the current situation of homelessness in Windsor?

The current situation in Windsor is and has been pretty stable over the last few years, although we are seeing increasing needs with individuals requiring more complex care, more mental health and addiction supports and a different type of housing than what we really have available to us in the community.

We know there's about 700 households experiencing some form of homelessness in the City of Windsor and in the County of Essex. That number has gone up and it's gone down and it just really depends on the trends and what's been available and what folks are experiencing.

I can imagine a lot of people aren't tracked, there's a lot of people living out there that you aren't aware of.

That's correct. I mean, the only thing that we can do with our community partners is really understand who is accessing services and supports — maybe that is interacting with an outreach worker on the street, it may be going to an emergency shelter or going into one of our drop-in programs. 

But there are quite a few people, particularly families, who may not want to be known to the system. It makes it really difficult when we don't know who is experiencing homelessness, what we need to do as a response or how we can help them end that experience.

What can we do as a community to make sure you have that information?

If you see somebody that might be experiencing homelessness or that you think is struggling, the best thing that you can do is contact 311.

Just make that report so that one of our outreach workers can go out, can connect with the person, really understand if they are struggling and try to direct them to the right and appropriate supports and services.

Encampments — we often think of multiple housing tents or shelters, but encampments are actually just defined as groups of two or more people sleeping outdoors.

So how many of these are there in Windsor right now, what's the best information you have on that?

What we know from our outreach teams is that there's currently two encampments in the city, they're particularly in the downtown core. 

But again, we rely on the information from the public. Because although our outreach team through family services is fantastic, they can't walk through every square inch of the municipality to be able to see all of these things. 

The majority of people that we are aware of are staying temporarily with someone, and unfortunately some people are singularly sleeping outdoors alone and very like segregated from others.

Can we expect encampments to grow, to see more of them, and to see the communities larger than they are right now?

I think that's going to depend. We have seen that trend in other communities. In Windsor, we've been working very closely with other city departments and things to try to make sure that folks are connected to the right supports and services so that anybody who does not want to stay outdoors doesn't have to.

But time is going to tell, we see sometimes more encampments in the nicer weather as opposed to the winter months.

I'm thinking, we do see them sort of down in ravines, but where else?

Really any type of bushy area — sometimes it could be along the rail lines, particularly in the rural areas. Folks don't want to draw that attention to themselves, so where they can get as much cover as possible, that's where they typically end up going.

How does our situation compare to the rest of the country right now?

I don't know about every community across the country, but I do know that, you know, if we just even compare ourselves to London our encampment situation is nowhere near as critical as theirs is.

City departments with police and the outreach team have been working together since about 2019 to try to connect as many people to services and supports in and try to get ahead of it so that we don't have folks having no other option besides staying outdoors.

I know [the CBC team was] talking about seeing encampments in different areas and some people are saying, you know, I've seen encampments in my own neighborhood, something I hadn't seen before, and they don't live in the downtown core.

Are you seeing sort of people setting up these makeshift areas further from the downtown than you've seen in the past?

Yeah, we have started seeing more people spreading out. So right now, I would say that people experiencing homelessness have been seen in almost every every ward or every neighborhood throughout Windsor and also in the county, which is different than what we had seen before, where it was more concentrated in the downtown core.

A lot of times that's just where folks feel more safe, there's less attention.