Temiskaming Shores women's shelter planning to build and operate its own transitional housing

The Pavilion Women's Centre in Temiskaming Shores, Ont. is planning to build and operate its own transitional housing for clients.

The centre currently operates an emergency shelter with 11 beds to support women-identifying people, and their children, when in crisis. Its proposed plan, presented to council in January, is for a new facility to house the shelter and add ten transitional housing units.

It's a plan two years in the making, according to the president of the centre's board of directors, Chantal Charbonneau, who said it's badly needed due to a lack of affordable housing in the area.

"The shelter itself is a moment in time, it's when the women are in crisis," she said.

"But often, they have to stay in the shelter much longer because the need for apartments and affordable housing in our area is astronomical."

The centre is in talks with the city about acquiring a lot on Meridian Avenue to build the new facility, but some have raised concerns about that location, including whether a next-door medical centre would still be able to expand and whether it would impact nearby property values.

Charbonneau said in the last year, the centre has had to turn away 29 women and children due to lack of space, which is almost triple the number from the previous year.

"For many women that leave abuse, that creates an impossible choice," she said. "They either return to the dangerous situation they were in or they face being homeless."

"It's scary to turn away women just because there's nowhere for them to go."

They are moving the emergency shelter into the new building too because their current space is old, small, and insufficient, Charbonneau explained.

"The women are basically touching," she said. "We do the best we can with what we have, but the women deserve more than that."

According to Charbonneau, in the last two years, only about 21 per cent of women who left the centre's emergency shelter were able to find adequate housing in the community.

In its 5-to-10-year strategic plan from December 2024, the city of Temiskaming Shores wrote that "rising housing and rental costs are contributing to a shortage of affordable housing options for low-income individuals including seniors."

The latest data from Statistics Canada shows the percentage of households in core housing need in Timiskaming District (which encompases Temiskaming Shores and the rural surroundings) was 10.1 per cent in 2021. It was almost twice as high in the rural region (12 per cent) as in the city (6.7 per cent).