GUELPH/WELLINGTON – While the region’s social housing manager has seen some progress made on ending or preventing people from experiencing homelessness, some prevention supports are being increasingly used by community members.
At a virtual information session hosted by the County of Wellington’s housing services division, which serves Guelph and Wellington County residents, director of housing Mark Poste gave an update on the housing and homelessness plan and provided some statistics from the 2022 annual report.
Poste said there’s been a shift in more community members needing rental support. In 2022, 315 households used rental arrears support, more than double than in 2021 where 143 households were supported.
“Along with that large increase, we saw first and last month rent (support) numbers rise as well, from 134 households in 2021 to 303 households in 2022,” Poste said.
Despite these supports to prevent people from experiencing homelessness, Poste said people enter into homelessness every day in the community.
Over the course of 2022, Poste said 520 different people used the emergency shelter system which added up to over 28,000 overnight stays in the shelters that year.
The average number of people accessing shelters per night has also gone up. Poste said on average 79 people used shelters each night in 2022, while pre-pandemic was closer to 50.
Meanwhile, the wait list for social housing continues to grow year over year with 3,377 people at the end of December 2022. Poste explained people in social housing are also tending to stay in those units longer than in the past, due to the current state of the private rental market.
"None of the tenants that are currently in our portfolio today are eager to leave their units and test the private market, they'd rather stay where they know their rents will remain stable," Poste said.
It wasn’t all bad news at the information session as Poste highlighted areas where the county was seeing good progress.
“Our diversion and rapid rehousing teams housed Wyndham House and Stepping Stone were able to divert 144 youth and 91 adults that were new to experiencing homelessness from using the shelter system,” Poste said. “They worked with those individuals to connect them either with a new place to call home or connecting them with friends and families with housing situations that are safe.”
Housing services was also able to house 157 people that were experiencing chronic homelessness, which Poste said was a big number. The number of youth experiencing chronic homelessness has also been reduced to nine from 51.
“We’re proud of the work that we and all our partners are doing,” Poste said.
Recently, Poste said housing services has been prioritizing transitional or supportive housing projects such as at 65 Delhi St. or Grace Gardens.
Looking ahead, Poste said a new 10-year housing and homelessness plan will be in place by 2025 but work to develop it will begin this fall.
Further, he explained many social housing providers in the community are approaching the end of their original operating agreements, many of which were developed in the 80s and 90s.
“The housing services division has been working hard and as a leader across the province and our work to developing funding strategy that will ensure that these providers are thriving in our community by maintaining existing high quality and stable long term social housing for our community,” Poste said. “So this is a real opportunity to shift these partnerships and develop a new long term vision for these really really important community assets.”
He said the county will also continue to seek funding from all levels of government to increase the supply and mix of affordable rental housing.
