This is the second in a series of columns written by staff from The Lighthouse to help the community better understand people experiencing homelessness and those who support them. This column will appear every other Monday. (Click here to read the first column).
Here's a snapshot of what life looked like for a local woman forced to live in a car:
Sally (not real name) came to The Lighthouse after living in her car for months. Losing her job due to her illness led to her losing her apartment. She had never been homeless before.
Feeling scared, she came through the doors of The Lighthouse to find welcoming staff that made her feel safe. Working with our housing and shelter workers, she was able to find housing after a couple months and continues to work with community partners.
The Lighthouse’s vision is a thriving community where everyone has hope, home and a future. Everyone. Background, upbringing, race, gender, faith, life circumstances do not matter at The Lighthouse as we believe every person deserves hope, home and a future.
The Lighthouse has been known as an emergency shelter for over 30 years in our community. We are the only emergency shelter for men, women and youth, as well as the only supportive housing in Orillia.
The Lighthouse Community Services is an emergency shelter that offers temporary housing for adults (ages 25+), youth (age 16-24) and a motel voucher program specifically for families. We have grown substantially over the last few years. Today, The Lighthouse has 50 beds for adults and eight beds specifically for youth; an increase in capacity well over 200 per cent in the last three years.
The need has also grown significantly and despite the considerable increase in our shelter’s capacity, we are almost always full and operating close to capacity with participants increasingly staying in the shelter system for longer than ever before.
In the past, a participant would stay with us for about a month. Today, with the lack of affordable safe housing, as well as the increase of homelessness, it now takes closer to four months or more to help the average participant find housing in the community. Although the average is close to four months, each participant is unique and some individuals may need support and shelter for up to a year, perhaps longer.
When reading those statistics, it’s important to keep in mind that the emergency shelter is not a home. None of our participants wants to be here — it is simply that they have nowhere else to go. Our goal is to help them to find safe housing and a stable life in the community.
To accomplish that, our housing workers create housing plans with each participant and meet regularly to review, coach and update their progress. While doing so, participants receive three nutritious meals and two snacks a day — reinforcing the importance of sleep and good health to be able to move on with their lives.
A one-year snapshot of The Lighthouse Emergency Shelter’s services:
- 300+ participants = 12,000 shelter beds
- 70,000+ meals
- 1,000 medical appointments
The Lighthouse works with a group of incredible community partners. We collaborate in many areas, as none of us can do what we do to help the vulnerable alone. We are grateful to all of our partners, including, among others: The Sharing Place, Agilec, Ontario Works, Empower Simcoe, Youth Haven, Catholic Family Services, Home and Community Care, The Couchiching Family Health Team. Couchiching Ontario Health Team, OSMH IPAC (Infection Prevention and Control), Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit, OPP, Canadian Mental Health Association, County of Simcoe Paramedics, the list goes on.
Finally, I’d like to touch on how The Lighthouse funds its operations. Thankfully, we now have two incredible facilities — and we are grateful for that. Today, our priority is how we continue funding ongoing operations.
Currently we have an annual operating budget of approximately $2.2 million, of which the County of Simcoe directly funds approximately 47 per cent both buildings — the majority of which goes towards the supportive housing programs.
This leaves about 53 per cent, or approximately $1.2 million, that we need to raise from donations, grants and the community each year.
Community participation and donations are critical and our heartfelt thanks goes out to every donor — whether large or small. Every donation generously given to The Lighthouse goes back to the participants — 100%. (Whether a warm bed, healthy meals, staff for support and safety, maintenance, programming and more.)
On behalf of all our participants, we truly thank you. Without you, we would be unable to continue to provide support to our community members and this most vulnerable population of our society.
We are always open to conversation and tours to help our community better understand what we do and how you can help to achieve our vision of a thriving community where everyone has a home, hope and a future.
Linda Goodall is the executive director at The Lighthouse and can be reached, via email, at [email protected]
