How one couple went from facing violence on Thunder Bay, Ont., streets to getting housed and work in a year

Shannon Moonias and James Carter play with their newly adopted kitten Paws on the couch of their apartment as a cold autumnal wind blasts through the streets.

It's a scene the couple says they couldn't have even dreamed of this time last year.

"It's home. It's nice, it's warm, it's safe. [We] don't have anybody bothering us," Moonias, 48, said about their apartment in Thunder Bay, Ont. "It's nice to actually have a place of your own."

Just over a year ago, Moonias and Carter, 34, were living in an encampment set up under an abandoned gas bar in a busy parking lot at the edge of Thunder Bay, along with as many as 20 others experiencing various stages of homelessness.

"This is the only place we had coverage when it rained, so it kept us all dry," Moonias recalled.

This simple act of people trying to find shelter caused outrage in the northwestern Ontario city, with tensions reaching a boiling point last fall.

Amid questions over how to respond to the public outcry and support people experiencing homelessness, with a shortage of transitional and supportive housing, a violent attack shocked the city.

In mid-afternoon on Oct. 5, 2021, a pickup truck drove over a tent where someone was believed to be sleeping, chance alone preventing death.

"We thought he got run over. It scared the hell out of us. It didn't feel safe [to live outdoors] after that," said Moonias.

Earlier that day, community agency Elevate NWO swept in, bringing everyone living in the encampment to safety at a local hotel, then later, new "harm reduction" housing units.

Elevate's executive director, Holly Gauvin, said it's a solution that helped Moonias and Carter, and some 50 others in the city, move from being homeless to housed in the span of a year, and follows a "housing first" model that leading experts say can help end homelessness in Canada, which is a key issue across the country.

Here are some of the figures:

Experts say there's a desperate need for Ottawa and the provincial and territorial governments to invest in similar programs, especially as encampments continue to be constructed in city parks and the people living there are subjected to violence.

People are dying while they wait, Gauvin said.