‘It’s appalling’: How women’s shelters in Canada can’t keep up with soaring demand

The Women and Children’s Shelter of Barrie in Ontario say they expect to turn away 650 women and children this year for service. It's a problem seen across Canada.

Shelters for women and children in Canada say they are in a crisis, with not enough beds to keep up with demand for their service.

The Women’s National Housing and Homelessness Network reports that approximately 699 women and 236 accompanying children are turned away from domestic violence shelters across Canada each day.

Jasminder Sekhon, director of community engagement, EDI and policy at Victim Services Toronto, says a lot of women are struggling to leave dangerous situations right now because they don’t have the economic resources to do so.

“When people are leaving, they’re looking for a safe place to go, and when shelter beds are absolutely full to the brim, and there isn’t enough space for people experiencing these forms of violence, many people end up getting turned away,” Sekhon says. “When people, their children, their pets are being turned away from going into shelter, then those individuals may not have anywhere to turn.”

Victim Services Toronto answered more than 18,000 calls in the last year, of which 70 per cent were for some form of gender-based violence, and they are not alone.

Because of the high cost of living, many women are staying in shelters for months, unable to find an affordable place to live after they leave an unsafe situation, compounding the issues shelters are facing.

The Women and Children’s Shelter of Barrie expects to turn away 650 women and children this year for service, already running over capacity at 35 beds in a 27-bed facility.

“Women are calling, and they are in desperate situations. They are telling us he is going to kill me, and we’re doing everything that we can to try and provide support to those women and their kids to create safety for them,” says the shelter’s excitative director, Theresa MacLennan.