Here's how one Winnipeg organization is helping people find, and keep, homes
West Central Women's Resource Centre offers outreach, transition programs for women and gender-diverse people
A Winnipeg non-profit organization says it's seeing success with programs that help people find housing, and keep them safe from evictions, as both the city and the province vow to do more to help people living in encampments in 2025.
The West Central Women's Resource Centre hopes the province not only properly funds social housing in the new year, but also the case workers and outreach workers who offer wraparound supports to people experiencing homelessness once they're in new homes.
"I think housing with supports is the critical piece," West Central executive director Lorie English said in a recent interview.
Her organization offers several models of wraparound support through its housing and outreach programs for women and gender-diverse people, she said, in an effort to help them find and maintain permanent housing.
The organization says it helped prevent 163 evictions in 2023 and 113 in 2024.
West Central recently gave CBC News a glimpse into the challenges precariously housed and unhoused people face, and how it tries to help them.
Reaching out
West Central offers housing programs for both lower- and higher-acuity clients, along with an outreach program that helps initiate contact with people experiencing homelessness, and can serve as a pathway to the organization's housing programs.
On a December night with wind chill making it feel like nearly –30 C, West Central's two-person outreach van dropped by encampments across the city with hot coffee and chicken noodle soup, harm reduction supplies and warm clothes in tow.
"Hey, you guys OK in there?" team lead Ren Armstrong calls out into the darkness.
Armstrong and outreach worker Megan Michell crunch their way down the snowy Assiniboine riverbank. Drop-ins like these can eventually lead to housing, they say.
"If we're starting from Square 1, some people have no ID. Some people don't have a birth certificate or a Manitoba Health card, so we start there," Armstrong said.
Encampments aren't always easy to find, as camps get dismantled or people move on to other sites, the pair say. They co-ordinate with other outreach vans through apps and messages to make sure encampments are regularly visited.
"If we can keep people in one spot and then try and house them from there, that's much easier than starting something, and then it gets disrupted," said Armstrong.
But challenges continue once people are housed. Case and support workers step in to make transitions easier and successful long term, English said.
West Central's HOMES (Housing Options, Mentorship and Economic Security) program usually works with those who already have homes, but may face eviction or need help resolving a conflict with their landlord, she said.
The program's support workers, who each manage a caseload of up to 40 people, connect clients with benefits, including employment and income assistance or Old Age Security, and find them more appropriate places to live, based on their needs, said English.
The organization also offers an intensive case management model under its More than Four Walls program, where case workers are assigned up to 18 clients experiencing homelessness.
"We'll help them find housing, and maintain and secure it," case worker Janis Ducharme said.
Ducharme arranges benefits for clients and finds them homes, either in Manitoba Housing or in the private housing market. From there, she helps them work on goals like finding work, going back to school or reuniting with family.
Case work also means driving participants to addictions treatment or mental health appointments, meeting with landlords and helping participants understand what good tenancy looks like: abiding by leases, keeping suites in good condition and respecting neighbours.
A big part of Ducharme's job is frequent home visits.
On a visit with CBC, Ducharme delivered bus tickets and a food hamper — filled with beans, eggs and peanut butter — to a client.
They're bus tickets Annie Charbonneau says she plans to use for upcoming job interviews.
WATCH | West Central Women's Resource Centre helps people stay housed:
Charbonneau lived in shelters and on the street for nearly two years until this past spring, after experiencing fraud and identity theft that drained her finances, she said.
She credits Ducharme's check-ins with helping her get back on track.
"I got a line on a job. I'm volunteering," said Charbonneau. "I'm really trying to … [get] a foot up. You know, just to go and say, 'Yes, I did it.'"
Finding housing a challenge
Clients have to meet the federal definition of being chronically homeless to qualify for West Central's intensive More than Four Walls, a program under the government's housing first strategy, English said.
Even when people are accepted, English says West Central still faces challenges in finding them homes: Manitoba Housing suites are limited, as are affordable units in the private market that can be covered on an income assistance or low-income budget.
"Many private landlords have a lot of thoughts about people who live unsheltered, and so a lot of the people we work with face a lot of discrimination," said English.
"It's often hard to find housing that's in good condition and is adequate and safe."
Case workers also have to juggle too many clients — they should oversee only up to a dozen people at a time, instead of 18, she said.
"We regularly have to close to intake, because we just literally cannot take on any more people and serve anyone in a good way."
Ducharme says she feels that first-hand, and has had to miss landlord-tenant meetings due to her workload.
English says West Central needs more case workers, but without housing, the organization is "still going to hit that wall of having people sit on caseloads without an option to put them somewhere."
In a recent year-end interview with CBC, Premier Wab Kinew said his government has been building up the affordable and Manitoba Housing stock.
"We're at a point now where in the first few months of 2025, those units are going to come online, and then we're going to be able to go out into the community and start housing people and adding the supports that they need to be more successful," Kinew said last month.
It's unclear how exactly his government's plan for housing with supports will roll out.
English hopes the community is consulted, and more front-line positions and social housing get funding."There are some folks who need that support 24/7, but in most cases, I think as long as there's someone there most days and most of the time, that's a workable model."
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