{"id":7166,"date":"2025-11-06T21:13:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-07T00:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/06\/this-ontario-town-is-on-a-mission-to-end-homelessness-by-2027-heres-how-its-going\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T21:13:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T00:13:29","slug":"this-ontario-town-is-on-a-mission-to-end-homelessness-by-2027-heres-how-its-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/2025\/11\/06\/this-ontario-town-is-on-a-mission-to-end-homelessness-by-2027-heres-how-its-going\/","title":{"rendered":"This Ontario town is on a mission to end homelessness by 2027. Heres how it\u2019s going"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>  This story is part of The Hometown Edition, a special series airing on CBC Radio\u2019sAs It HappensNov. 3-7,showcasing the struggles and triumphs of Canada\u2019s small towns.Listen hereto learn more about what\u2019s happening in St. Thomas, Ont.When Sara Pepper was living on the streets of St. Thomas, Ont., a few years back, she says there wasn\u2019t much in the way of support.\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the place to be homeless, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d Pepper told As It Happens host Nil K\u04e7ksal.\u201cThere weren\u2019t a lot of open doors, not many services were offered and, socially, people just didn\u2019t understand it.\u201dNow, thanks to the town\u2019s aggressive plan to end chronic homelessness, Pepper has a roof over her head and a warm bed to sleep in every night as she puts the pieces of her life back together.And if things go according to plan, within two years, nobody will be living long-term on the streets of St. Thomas.LISTEN | Full interview with Sara Pepper:As It Happens8:19A look inside an Ontario town\u2019s ambitious plan to end homelessnessSt. Thomas is a city of about 46,000 in southwestern Ontario. For 44 years, the local Ford plant was the city\u2019s main economic driver, until it closed in 2011.Like many towns and cities across Canada, St. Thomas has found itself facing three overlapping crises: a housing shortage, an opioid epidemic, and surge of homelessness.It used to keep Mayor Joe Preston up at night. But these days, with a Volkswagen electric battery plant on the way and an anti-homelessness plan showing tangible results, he tells K\u04e7ksal, he\u2019s feeling optimistic.\u201cWe\u2019re on the cusp. We\u2019re moving forward,\u201d Preston said. \u201cWe\u2019re solving a problem ahead of many other cities across Canada.\u201dFor roughly five years now, the city has been working on a strategy to get people off the streets and into housing, based on the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness\u2019 national Built For Zero program.St. Thomas has partnered with the province, the feds, community organizations and non-profits to ramp up shelter spaces, but also quickly transition people out of shelters and into supportive housing with access services like counselling, health-care and more.St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston says the city is on track to meet its target of endling chronic homelessness within two years.  (City of St. Thomas website) Danielle Neilson, manager of housing stability services for the St. Thomas-Elgin region, says it\u2019s important to understand that while emergency shelters are important, they are not the solution to the homelessness crisis.  \u201cThat\u2019s somewhere that, in my humble opinion, we\u2019ve gone wrong for decades,\u201d Neilson said. \u201cThe solution to homelessness has always been housing.\u201dSo far, it seems to be working.Last year, St. Thomas announced it had reduced chronic homelessness \u2014 meaning people who are unhoused repeatedly or for an extended period of time \u2014 by 30 per cent.The city says it will have enough shelter spaces this winter to accommodate the roughly 130 people who are still living in the streets.What\u2019s more, it says it\u2019s on track to meet its goal of ending chronic homelessness in St. Thomas by 2027.\u201cWe call it a \u2018functional\u2019 end to homelessness, because you can never stop it from happening,\u201d Neilson said. \u201cBut what you need to do is create a system where \u2026 you\u2019ve essentially cleared the bottleneck.\u201dThat means that, while people continue to fall into homelessness, they don\u2019t stay that way for long.It also also means the city can\u2019t rest on its laurels once it achieves its goal.\u201cWe also know we can\u2019t stop there,\u201d she said. \u201c[Or] you\u2019ll end up right back in the same bottleneck again.\u201d Pepper\u2019s journeyPepper has lived in a supportive housing unit for the last two years. Before that, she spent four years on the streets in St. Thomas.It\u2019s not a life she ever would have expected for herself.\u201cI met cocaine, and that definitely sent me sideways,\u201d she said. \u201cMy marriage dissolved and that kind of thing, and I was on the street before I knew it.\u201dBack then, the city\u2019s only overnight shelter, Inn Out Of The Cold, operated out of a church basement in winters only.\u201cWe would go there, pull out our cot, we had to set up everything, and then have our sleep,\u201d Pepper said. \u201cWe had to be out of there by six o\u2019clock, I believe it was, in the morning. It was pretty busy. Very exhausting.\u201dThe Station at 16 Queen Street in St. Thomas is a 45-unit highly supportive housing building constructed by charity developers Indwell. The city\u2019s mayor says two more similar projects will be completed by early next year to house more individuals (Indwell)Today, things are looking brighter.The Inn is now a year-round, 24-hour municipal emergency shelter, with its own dedicated space, that offers three meals a day and access to health care and mental health support.Pepper, meanwhile, lives at The Station, a subsidized supportive housing complex built in 2023 and operated by Indwell, a charity developer the city has partnered with.Having stable housing, she says, has made an \u201castronomical\u201d difference in her life.\u201cHere, I can breathe a little bit. I\u2019m guaranteed that I have meals. I have the space that I can plan my future, you know?\u201d she said. \u201cSpending every day trying to keep yourself even fed or warm or comfortable inplaces that you\u2019re not getting kicked out of, it\u2019s exhausting.\u201dIndwell also opened The Railway City Lofts in 2021, which helps people who are coming directly out of homelessness by offering addiction support, behavioural therapy, health care and help with medication and meals.The city is also working on building affordable homes, says Neilson, for people who are ready to transition out of supportive housing into something more independent, including tiny homes built by the local YMCA.WATCH | Tiny homes a part of St. Thomas housing strategy:Take a look inside affordable tiny homes in St. ThomasProject Tiny Hope is borne of a partnership between the YWCA St. Thomas-Elgin, Sanctuary Homes, and Doug Terry Homes. The homes offer an alternative to traditional affordable and supportive housing approaches. CBC News got a look inside the homes and spoke with Doug Terry and Shellie Chowns from Doug Terry Ltd. at the grand opening.But one of the biggest differences Pepper has noticed over the last five years is a change in attitudes.\u201cPeople are more willing to help, people are more willing to ask if you\u2019re OK,\u201d she said. \u201cThey seem to be coming back around to realizing that we\u2019re human beings.\u201dStill more to doDespite all the progress she\u2019s seen, Pepper says she still encounters barriers that make it hard for people to get a leg up.\u201cThe biggest thing that I see is some kind of [missing] link between the people that are experiencing the homelessness and the people who are running the systems and programs. There\u2019s not a lot of people that have lived experience, not a lot of people that really can empathize because they\u2019ve never been there, you know?\u201d she said.She\u2019s calling on the city and Indwell and other services to offer more peer-led programs, and employ people who have experienced homelessness first-hand.Natasha Thuemler, Indwell\u2019s regional director, says charity\u2019s staff come from \u201cvarying backgrounds of both lived and educational experiences.\u201d\u201cOrganizationally, we aspire to maintain healthy therapeutic relationships with our residents so the disclosure of those personal experiences by staff are not always made public,\u201d Thuemler told CBC in an email.\u201cOur model of supportive housing also doesn\u2019t meet the needs of everyone\u2026. Unfortunately, there are still system gaps so we work with sector partners and individuals to help advocate and ensure all people\u2019s health and housing needs get met.\u201dThis ramshackle shelter was built in the trees about a dozen feet away from the Thames River in London, Ont., a city near St. Thomas, in 2023. (Colin Butler\/CBC)Pepper knows first-hand the difference lived experience makes. She now volunteers with The Nameless, an anti-poverty mutual aid group in St Thomas, where she runs a peer-support group focused on harm reduction.\u201cThey know that I get it. They don\u2019t feel judged,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen they can speak freely and openly, then you have the opportunity to actually help them from every angle, because you know the whole story.\u201dShe is skeptical about whether St. Thomas will achieve its goal of ending chronic homelessness within the next two years.But Indwell\u2019s newest housing project, she says, gives her hope.The charity is currently in the process of transforming the empty Balaclava Public School into 78 supportive housing units.\u201cIf it can be successful in getting the people into the apartments, and then helping the people to keep their apartments, then it could be perfect,\u201d Pepper said. \u201cIt really could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This story is part of The Hometown Edition, a special series airing on CBC Radio\u2019sAs It HappensNov. 3-7,showcasing the struggles and triumphs of Canada\u2019s small towns.Listen hereto learn more about what\u2019s happening in St. Thomas, Ont.When Sara Pepper was living on the streets of St. Thomas, Ont., a few years back, she says there wasn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,1047,1],"tags":[116,1046],"class_list":["post-7166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indigenous","category-ontario","category-uncategorized","tag-indigenous","tag-ontario"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}