Anglicans helped launch a faith network at this year’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness and laid the groundwork for a major initiative next year.
Bishop Anna Greenwood-Lee of the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia and Paul Keherly of the Anglican Diocese of Montreal joined faith network co-chair Garth Brown of the St. Vincent de Paul Society as panelists for an inaugural presentation at the Montreal conference.
Although the alliance has been active for 13 years, the significant work of faith communities in addressing homelessness has not been recognized in the organization – until now.
Rather, it’s been an aspiration of the alliance’s chief executive officer Tim Richter. He secured funding for a network coordinator but felt unable to move forward without a faith-based steering committee. He asked me [writer of this article] as someone who has served on the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa’s Episcopal Panel on Housing Justice for years, to help gather an interfaith group of interested people, and over the last year the steering committee has come together.
“Faith communities have always played a central role in responding to homelessness,” Richter said. “The faith network will allow communities across the country to work together, share great ideas and become a powerful voice in tackling the structural issues that create homelessness.”
About 70 delegates from across Canada attended the inaugural session, and many joined the network. Some gave impromptu presentations of their projects and experiences.
Bishop Greenwood-Lee told Perspective that she underlined the challenges of actually creating suitable housing. She noted that the overwhelming majority of the 2,300 delegates are front-line responders to homelessness or those with lived experience.
“They’re not building the housing as such,” she said. “They have different problems than we do when we’re trying to build housing.”
She suggested the network might share best practices in overcoming regulatory and social barriers in creating housing.
Garth Brown contacted the Rev. Graham Singh, incumbent of St. Jax, a bilingual Anglican parish and community hub in Montreal but more particularly the founder and chief executive officer of Relèven. Relèven specializes in working with closed churches and in the re-use and development of religious property.
Singh made the case for a national declaration on the use of redundant religious property to help house homeless people. It might include a pledge to make a percentage of land available.
Singh is already consulting CEO Tim Richter and his own religious contacts in Winnipeg, site of next year’s conference, to put it on the agenda.
“That kind of vision could create all kinds of possibilities and opportunities,” Brown said.
(Singh’s Relèven is working with the Anglican dioceses of Huron and Qu’Appelle on the re-use of property).
Regulatory red tape has been a particular problem according to Greenwood-Lee. A project at St. John’s in Duncan was held up for six weeks, awaiting one signature.
“Finally, someone came out and was aghast that they were the problem,” she said. “Any work we can do in coalition, especially across sectors, to get municipalities to work with the provinces and the feds to get projects done faster would be huge.”
The alliance’s national conferences provide an opportunity for an important dialogue that was a focus of Paul Keherly’s presentation.
Bringing his extensive experience in mentoring homeless people, he stressed the need to listen to their views before decisions are made so that housing works for them.
His views are similar to those of the Rev. Maggie Helwig, rector of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church in Toronto, site of an encampment that has been forcibly removed, only to be re-settled:
“There is a reason people may find encampments a preferable way to live (as opposed to shelters or hotel rooms) — because they offer simple human community. They are places where people look after each other.”
Another take-away for Keherly will be a recommendation that his own Diocese of Montreal survey individual parishes as well as other denominations and faiths. “Let’s find out what they are doing, or would like to do. Have they collaborated with other organizations? What are others doing? Can we collaborate? I’d like to see more done here.”
All of this is grist for mill of the steering committee in the coming weeks. The co-chair with Garth Brown is Laura Solberg, executive director of Kentro Christian Network. Members Amy Fisher, Salvation Army; Fran Klodawsky, Multifaith Housing Initiative; Nuha Dwaikat-Shaer, assistant professor, social work at Wilfrid Laurier University; Dawn Campbell, Community Housing Transformation Centre; Jeff Wheeldon, municipal councillor, Brighton Ontario, chair, Brighton Homelessness Task Force; Amanda Doré, executive director, Centre de Jour St James/ St James Drop-in Centre, Montreal, Bishop Anna Greenwood-Lee.
St. James, Morrisburg — Stormont Deanery