I see the answer to homelessness in embracing its complexity — and that means recognizing that gender-specific challenges require gender-specific solutions. When we fully understand how homelessness affects women and gender diverse people differently, we can build responses that truly work. When we embrace the complexity of homelessness, we also embrace the humanity of people living it.

This year for International Women’s Day, I think of all the women and gender diverse people at Cornerstone who need a safe, affirming place to land. I see the complex ways that they become homeless and remain in the shelter system. Every day, I see the courage it takes to start over after violence, displacement, or crisis. I see the barriers that stand in the way, particularly for women and gender diverse people.

There are some undeniable truths about our work. Women and gender diverse people who are racialized experience homelessness at higher rates compared to their white and cisgender sisters. They are more likely to experience systemic racism in all areas of life: housing, employment, healthcare. That is a piece of the complexity that we need to understand and address. There are many other layers of complexity and this is only one of them.

So, this International Women’s Day, I’m calling on our community to turn your compassion into commitment and action. Let’s embrace the complexity together. We can all do tangible things that make a difference.

Firstly, you can call on politicians to ensure organizations like Cornerstone have sustainable investment in order to address the complexity that is homelessness. Cutting funding and simplifying services is not the way out of this.

Secondly, we all have to have hard conversations with people in our life. We can create a big impact through small conversations. At a dinner party years ago, I called out a problematic comment from a guest. Six months later, I got a phone call from that guest’s partner asking my help to flee her violent relationship. She had no one else she could talk to, but she knew I would be a safe person. She never would have called if I hadn’t said anything.

And finally, get involved. When things are daunting and scary, we have a tendency to look inwards. To want to protect ourselves. To keep things small and simple. I promise you that it feels better to say or do something than it does to sit and wallow in the difficulty of solving homelessness. Volunteer, fundraise, or do a food drive in your workplace for organizations that spark your passion for supporting women.

This International Women’s Day, the theme is Balancing the Scales. Let’s be forceful in our commitment to ending homelessness, to having tough conversations, and for getting involved in our community. We don’t get out of this problem through disengagement.

For more information about Cornerstone or to donate.

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Tens of thousands of Canadians will take to the streets for CNOY with events taking place in 200 cities, towns, and communities across the country. By walking together in the chill of the night, participants will better understand the experience of being on the streets during a cold Canadian winter, while raising funds to aid the work of Cornerstone Housing for Women in providing much-needed support.

The family-friendly Westboro Village walk begins and ends at All Saints Anglican Church, located at 347 Richmond Road. Participants will walk a 2km or 5km route, can warm up with hot drinks at rest stops along the way, and will be able to celebrate their efforts together at the finish line. All those who raise over $150 (or $75 for youth) will also don CNOY toques as they face the cold night.

This is Cornerstone Housing for Women’s seventh year taking part in the Coldest Night of the Year, and they’re aiming to raise $100,000 for their work with people experiencing hunger, hurt, and homelessness in Ottawa. Organizers are expecting about 250 walkers from 50 teams.

“With the frigid temperatures we’ve had, this walk really brings home the importance of shelter and safe housing for women in our city,” said Cornerstone’s new executive director Anne Marie Hopkins. “This will be my first year walking in the Coldest Night of the Year, and one month out I can already feel the community spirit of our neighbours, friends, donors who want to make a difference in women’s lives. It always feels so incredible to see the way Cornerstone’s supporters show up for us. I’m ready to bundle up and make a difference on February 28th.”

Cornerstone Housing for Women has been serving Ottawa for 43 years, and the funds raised in the Coldest Night of the Year will benefit their clients in a time of the year known historically for low levels of giving.

For more information or to join the walk: https://en.cnoy.org/location/ottawawestboro

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They participated with about 60 other front-line providers in the Empathy Project, described by the organizer, Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, as an exercise in social policy education.

Each one assumed a persona—a person who needed help from multiple service providers—which was fictional but was expertly designed to reflect real-life experience.

They were given a list of service locations such as Service Ontario, a health care clinic and community housing service which were scattered around a multi-storey building of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

At the end of the exercise, some of their comments were: “meaningful and memorable…unsettling…very powerful… profound…overwhelmed at how awful it is…”

“The Empathy Project challenges participants to engage with the realities of navigating a complex and often dehumanizing system,” Moira Alie, chair of the Bishop’s Panel on Housing Justice, said. “Though the experience can be frustrating, its purpose is not to foster hopelessness, but to inspire action. If homelessness is a systemic problem, it is also a solvable one.” Alie is engagement manager at the alliance.

Mark Holzman, chair of Cornerstone’s board of directors, stepped into the situation of an Inuit man who had been living with his son and mother in Ottawa for two years, doing well enough to rent an apartment. Until, one day he was evicted, informed that the landlord was going to renovate. He was out on the street.

“I went to register on the housing list and was told it’s a six-year wait…There were a lot of people waiting at the shelter. Often the answer was, ‘No…no, we can’t help you, you need to go over there…no, you aren’t going to be helped today.’ That was unsettling.”

Holzman pointed out that in the simulation the “clients” had to walk up and down stairs to locations in a multi-storey building. In reality they would have to take a bus. And sometimes their first problem is getting bus tickets.

Anne Marie Hopkins, executive director of Cornerstone, assumed the role of Charles, a young immigrant refugee trying to get into a shelter and in need of disability support.

“I was not able to get my birth certificate because I didn’t have $35 to pay for it. Because of that I’m not able to get onto disability and get some income to get housing.”

Hopkins said it was a realistic reflection of the barriers that folks at the shelter face regularly. Cornerstone has a fund to help with issues like getting a birth certificate, and staff will accompany people to help them access services properly.

Shauna-marie Young, executive director of Belong Ottawa, stepped into the persona a black woman, a recent arrival to Canada who didn’t have her documents in order. She became ill, had to be hospitalized, losing her children to foster care. Upon discharge she struggled to find income and housing so her children could be returned.

As she walked from agency to agency, she found abject rejection, a lack of real support, a fatigue on the part of the providers when they had nothing to offer. “Imagine losing your children to care and being told, ‘There’s nothing I can do to help you. No, you can’t see your children’…Being in receipt of no, no, no, as kindly as it’s said, it’s still no, no, no.”

The Rev. Victoria Scott, a member of Belong Ottawa’s board of directors who has just been appointed as the director general for Anglican Community Ministries, was Charles, a 17-year-old who had been bounced around in foster care, suffered abuse and ended up on the street.

“Without any money, ID or connections other than a local shelter, I had to make my way through a day of navigating the system: going to Service Ontario to be told that I couldn’t apply for a birth certificate without the fee. I then went to the ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) office to be told I couldn’t apply without ID, an address and bank statements. I reached out to a landlord to be told I couldn’t apply for an apartment without proof that I was receiving ODSP. I went to the employment office to find a line so long that I had to leave in order to get back to the shelter to sign in before 4 pm.”

Scott said she knew people in similar situations when she was incumbent at St Luke’s, with its St Luke’s Table drop-in centre.  She was impressed by an approach that encourages empathy. “I often think there is a misconception that the church borrows social justice from politics but it’s gospel-based. It’s our baptismal vows. It’s what Jesus did.”

Simon Kinsman, newly-appointed chair of Belong Ottawa’s advisory board, assumed the persona of a single mother, struggling to support her own ailing mother and a son facing “renoviction.”

She had been managing financially but had to take unpaid time away from her work, spending days at the offices of service providers. She herself ended up being illegally evicted and turned to the emergency shelter for help.

“What stood out for me,” Kinsman said, “was how discouraging and even dehumanizing it is to be told no constantly. People facing homelessness continue to face life’s other challenges — a sick parent, job insecurity, without the safe space to rest and without a support network.”

“It made me incredibly proud of the work Belong Ottawa and the Anglican ministries do in providing that safe space.”

Kinsman said the project is valuable for the decision-makers to better understand how the system they have designed is experienced by the people who use it.

That’s the goal of Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa. It has been taken up by Ottawa and Pembroke city councils and is offered to medical and nursing students, anyone considering a caring profession, including teachers.

Raising awareness of how the system actually works is seen by all as a big step forward in reducing homelessness.

As Mark Holzman said: ”We hope the people making the rules can experience what it’s like. Do they really need all that information before they can provide a service? If you’re telling your story over and over again…Is there not a way to simplify that process?”

Cornerstone chair Mark Holzman (top), Cornerstone executive director Anne Marie Hopkins and Belong Ottawa’s Shauna-marie Young stepped into the shoes of homeless persons this winter.  Jesus Homeless, by Timothy Schmalz.

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Dr. Thomas Barnardo came to London in 1866 from Ireland in the midst of an outbreak of cholera that swept through the East End killing more than 3,000 people and leaving families destitute. Thousands of children slept on the streets, and many others were forced to beg after being maimed in factories where they were forced to work. The following year, having decided to abandon his desire to become a missionary in China, the doctor set up a ragged school in the East End where poor children could get a basic education.

In 1870, Barnardo opened his first home for boys in London, and it would become the first of many Barnardo orphanages across Britain. A sign was posted on the front of that home: ‘No Destitute Child Ever Refused Admission.’ While the charity no longer runs homes for boys and girls, Doctor Barnardo’s mission is alive and well in the good work they continue to do: “that every child deserves the best possible start in life, whatever their background.” It is a philosophy that still inspires the charity today.

With the help of Barnardo’s meticulous records, we heard something of Joseph’s story whose father became blind at a very young age and had to leave his employment. Despite his affliction, he continued to support his wife and three children by playing a violin in the streets, until his death of bronchitis at the age of 32. A while later, Joseph’s mother also died of consumption and as a result he and his brother were left homeless.

As you may have guessed, Joseph was my grandfather, and the story of my great-grandfather playing a violin on the streets of London in a desperate attempt to feed his family has had a powerful impact upon my life and ministry. I know, first-hand, the potential that this kind of poverty and deprivation can have to reach down and touch the lives of those in the generations to follow.

What was remarkable to me and so encouraging for all of us in our diocese was the fact that Cornerstone was a ministry that began when a few faithful Anglicans saw a need in their neighbourhood and responded from their hearts and in response to their baptismal calling. As stated on our website our five community ministries: “serve those most vulnerable in our midst. They are often people struggling with issues around homelessness, poverty, mental illness, trauma, and addiction. All are welcome and accepted regardless of faith, race, gender, or orientation. Together, we strive to nurture the health and well-being of all those who seek our services, creating communities of compassion around them.” I invite you to learn more about each of our five remarkable community ministries and, if you are not already doing so, to consider supporting them financially.

We have just concluded our Christmas celebrations and given thanks that in the humble setting of the birth of the Christ-child, the glory of the Lord shone around an unlikely people with a message that has echoed down through the ages: that no life or no situation, no matter how difficult or how impoverished, is beyond the reach and desire of God to enter into and to change in dramatic ways. May we all be inspired by the wonderful directors, staff members, volunteers and board members of each of our Community Ministries so that we too may be instruments of this transforming love of God to the world Christ came to save.

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Hopkins comes to the role with deep experience both in frontline work as well as in management and leadership roles.

Growing up in Orleans, she recalled that has always been concerned about people who were vulnerable, getting left behind or experiencing things that weren’t fair. “Very much a caretaker, I have always loved being part of a community and giving back. … So I went into community development right out of high school.”

Hopkins began her training in a community outreach and development program at Sheridan College in Brampton, Ont. “I did a couple of really good placements there that got me some actual frontline experience and really fell in love with being in this field.” When she returned to Ottawa, she earned her Bachelor of Social Work degree at Carleton University while working at in an administrative role Ottawa Inner City Health (OICH) from 2009 to 2017. During those years, she also volunteered at the emergency shelter Shepherds of Good Hope and later at the Salvation Army in an outreach van used to visit encampments, often taking people who were homeless to and from hospital.

In 2017, she became a manager at OICH as it launched a peer worker pilot program at Shepherds of Good Hope where they hired individuals with lived experience to help provide support to people in the community who were homeless and/or who were using drugs. “That project expanded drastically because the overdose crisis got very out of control very quickly,” Hopkins said. “I was running a team of peer workers who were essentially running around the shelters and around the downtown core, just responding to overdoses. And that was a wild, wild time. Later that year, InnerCity Health opened their supervised injection site. I was the manager there…. on the team of folks who opened it. It was one of the four in the city and the only one open 24 hours a day. And it was incredibly busy. It still is. I was a manager there for five years, and then I became a director of operations at InnerCity.”

Hopkins developed a good working relationship with Cornerstone through that work. Its Booth Street supportive housing residence has an aging at home program that is run jointly with OICH. “So, 20 of the 40 units here are run jointly with Inner City Health. And Inner City Health staff are on site here 24 hours a day, managing the healthcare of those 20 folks who are typically aging, have complex health issues, who need more medical care than what Cornerstone could give. So, we run the program together.”

Last year, Hopkins earned her MBA, a program she started online at the University of Fredericton during the pandemic, and she felt ready and wanted to be challenged in a new way after 17 years with OICH. “I really wanted to work with women. I didn’t want to leave the field of [working with] the homeless, mental health, substance use. Then this position came up and…it all worked out. The timing was amazing.”

What experience best prepared her to lead Cornerstone? “It’s absolutely my frontline experience. Working those frontline positions, being a very hands-on manager in the supervised injection site at Shepherd’s, responding to overdoses beside staff, really understanding the day-to-day realities. Working in this field, in social services and in healthcare, is so different now than it was 10 years ago. …But it’s really my foundation and frontline work that keeps me really connected to the work and that really drives my passion for wanting to run a really good and strong organization.

“I’ve loved community health care and social work,” including looking for ways to reduce barriers and to take care of diverse communities, and “really believing that the folks from those communities are the strongest experts that can tell us what they need and how they need it” Hopkins said.

“Working in an organization like InnerCity that really values peer work and lived experience really helped solidify, fundamentally for me, how I want to work with communities and have that very shared approach and that understanding of what it means to have power, what it means to have power when you’re working with an equity -seeking community. Those have always been passions of mine.

“There are some mental health challenges within my family, and so I have always had a personal connection to that … and those kinds of challenges. So that also has been sort of my North Star, my guiding fundamentals … and has very much has shaped a lot of who I am, how I am a social worker and how I lead.”

When asked what the biggest challenges that Cornerstone faces are, Hopkins said funding instability is major. “There are many incredibly important social services in this city and we’re all asking for money from the same pot…. There’s been a lot of changes and some instability with funding sources. It’s been really challenging. It’s also puts more pressure on our fundraising team.”

This is compounded by inflation. Cornerstone’s costs for food have increased dramatically, but Hopkins added that has also impacted donors. “If you look at reports from the Ontario nonprofit network, organizations are struggling to fundraise because people are in more precarious financial situations and aren’t in a position to donate as much.”

She said that another challenge is “trying to keep our employees well. This is a field that has a much higher burnout rate than it did 10 years ago,” she said. “When I first became a social worker, for probably the first five or six years, I never saw one overdose. It just wasn’t something that was part of everyday life. There were people who used drugs that we supported … but they could maintain a lot more function and stability than they can now…. There are many more difficult realities when you have a population that is … impacted by the toxic drug supply…. Each overdose is a hypoxic event, your brain is without oxygen, and that causes brain injuries [which] bring a whole other level of challenges to service providers,” she said. “It’s really difficult to have a really well employee base when they’re experiencing all these harsh realities.”

Cornerstone has now hired a clinical services specialist to support staff, providing debriefing and confidential counselling after critical incidents such as overdoses or a death, as well as helping to inform decision making about the best ways to support staff and reduce burnout.

Cornerstone grew in 2024 with the opening of its Eccles Street residence, which added 46 units of supportive housing, as well as expanding its emergency shelter capacity from 60 to 165 when it moved from O’Connor Street downtown to a new building on Carling Ave. So for now, Hopkins says the focus is on stabilization in the organization and ensuring Cornerstone is sustainable for the future.

She says she is enjoying the change from working in a head office where she didn’t see any clients to working on the main floor of Cornerstone’s Booth Street residence. Now, she said, “I always have my door open, and I can hear residents laughing with the staff….” Seeing women who have been homeless and in a constant state of fight-or-flight start to settle into a sense of safety is rewarding, she said. And hearing them say, “Oh my gosh, I love my apartment, there’s this little balcony…. I’m a part of the community now, and I feel so supported by the staff…. This case manager goes the extra mile for me.’ That’s the stuff that makes all the difficult things worth it,” Hopkins said. “They go on outings as a community. They had a beach day the other day … and they went to a farm and saw some horses and pet some animals, and the photos are just pure joy. … Anytime there’s a bad day, I need to go spend some time with residents because I’ll feel better.

“And that is sort of the beauty of Cornerstone, is that everything that is done here is done with such care and intention. I knew that before I started working here, but I don’t think I understood to what level.”

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The move immediately increased capacity by 145 per cent—from 61 to 150 beds—also vastly increasing its capacity for services such as case management, counselling, health care and laundry. 

The process began in the last week of April. First, all 61 residents of O’Connor St moved. They were followed by 89 more referred from the city’s social distancing and overflow centres who were moved in small groups. Another 15 spaces have been reserved as overflow, to be used when other city shelters are full.

The city operated a family shelter at the location, 2980 Carling Ave., for 20 years. After the city leased a former retirement residence on Corkstown Road and transferred families, it offered the building on Carling Ave to Cornerstone.  As it did at O’Connor St.,  Cornerstone will operate the shelter in a building owned by the city.

The city has seen an unprecedented demand for shelter services, Paul Lavigne, director of the city’s housing services says. “Cornerstone is a key community partner that is helping to ensure women experiencing homelessness are provided with the needed support to stabilize and obtain long-term housing.”

Kate Jackson, Cornerstone’s interim executive director, notes that shelter services have been at the heart of its mission, mandate and values for 40 years.  A community ministry of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa, the shelter began in the church hall at All Saints Sandy Hill.

Along with its many advantages, the new space presents new challenges to Cornerstone. Its community kitchen has gone from preparing 300 meals a day last fall to 1,000 daily at the end of May.

This when food insecurity has been like no other time, including the COVID period, Amber Bramer, Cornerstone director of communications and development says.

In addition to full meal service for 2980 at Carling Ave. the community kitchen supplies the supportive housing residents at the new Eccles St. location as well as Booth St. and some at Princeton Ave. 

Even though the Princeton residents have cooking facilities, some can’t afford to buy the food. They can use the food bank only once a month, so they end up falling back on the community kitchen. Water damage to the kitchen at MacLaren Residence created the need for temporary service to another 20 residents.

Fundraising to support the expanded shelter as well as the supportive housing is a continuing challenge since the loss of about $1 million in government funds last year.

There is a standing need to raise $1.5 million every year in the private sector—$1 million to support the shelter, the rest for supportive housing. There is about $250,000 left to raise in the current campaign. 

A 40th Anniversary “over the decades” garden party at the home of the Irish ambassador is scheduled for June 9. The fundraiser is an annual fixture on Cornerstone’s calendar.

Bramer says corporate sponsors have stepped up. The Taggart Parkes Foundation provided significant support for the garden at Eccles St.  IKEA provided furnishings and bedding.  Both are new supporters. The Home Depot, a past donor, returned to help with Eccles St.  And the Tides Foundation contributed to the community kitchen. 

Both individual donors and corporate partners are not able to be as generous today as they were during the campaign for the Princeton Ave. project in 2018, Bramer says. She thinks it has a lot to do with inflation, particularly the rising cost of food and gasoline.

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“Cornerstone is very proud to be opening our fifth residential housing building. This month we will be welcoming 46 women and gender diverse individuals into a permanent home,” interim executive director Kate Jackson said, welcoming a crowd of supporters to a festive ribbon-cutting and fundraising event at the building.

“It takes a community to make something like this happen,” she said, offering special thanks to   the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation, the City of Ottawa, MacDonald Brothers Construction, CADCO, and CSB Architect.

The building has been converted from an office building into residential housing adapted specifically for Cornerstone’s supportive housing model with common space to gather and office space on the main floor. 

Ann Chaplin, a member of the Cornerstone board of directors, told Crosstalk that she had memories of doing her bar exams in the basement of the building when it was used by the law society. She said she was happy to see what had seemed like a soulless place at that time transformed into supportive housing that will be vibrant and full of soul. 

MP Yasir Naqvi also shared memories of writing his bar exams in the building. “I did not know back then that one day this building which started as a girls’ elementary school would be repurposed to build 46 housing [units] for women….This is a great shining example of conversion, of turning a commercial or educational use building into residential housing, something [City councillor Ariel Troster] and I are working to do more of in our downtown core, so we can create more housing, more affordable housing, more supportive housing for people in our community.”

Cornerstone is an Anglican Community Ministry, and Bishop Shane Parker of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa reflected on how it began 40 years ago as a few cots in a church basement “when a group of people in Sandy Hill, people of faith and goodwill, began to listen and see what was happening in the community around them. And more importantly, they began to act to address it,” he said. 

“There are many people who look with compassion and see what’s going on in our community and want to help. It was our great, great privilege to welcome everyone in to the work of compassion and care and justice and kindness. And that’s why we’re here today. Thank you all for sharing in this.”

More inspiration came from remarks made by Alaina, a former Cornerstone resident, who is now a member of the outreach program and “an advocate for all things Cornerstone because I think it’s a really important part of our community and has been a part of my life.”

She shared that after moving to Ottawa in 2019, “I didn’t have anywhere to go, I and a lot of the shelters were unsuitable. I called Cornerstone and they gave me a home.” She spoke of how Cornerstone accompanied her to the trial of her assault and supported her through the losses of two service dogs. She now lives independently and supports herself with a job at Loblaws. 

Cornerstone helps “so many women like me live fulfilling lives. And I just want to thank each and every one of you for being here and for being a part of helping each and every woman that’s about to move in here live a life that has so much support and so many people rooting for them.”

Related stories:

Hollyer House opens its doors in Bells Corners

Three housing projects open and welcome residents home

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There will be food, entertainment and activities for the women and gender diverse people who use the organizations’ services at St. Joseph’s Church on Wilbrod St. at the event put on by Belong Ottawa at The Well, Cornerstone Housing for Women, (both Anglican Community Ministries) along with Dress for Success, Harmony House, Immigrant Women Services of Ottawa, Interval House of Ottawa, the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre, and St. Joe’s.

Sarah Davis, executive director of Cornerstone Housing for Women, told Crosstalk that this is the first time since the pandemic began that all of the organizations will host a joint event.

The pandemic deepened the agencies’ connections, said Davis. “As you can imagine, crisis brings people closer together. Those partnerships are really forged to the point where we have memorandums of understanding with our sister organizations and are doing much more collaborative work on the ground together,” she said. “I don’t think any of us would have made it through to “knock on wood” the other side [of the pandemic] without our sister agencies, so we’re really celebrating the collaboration and partnerships,  lifting each other up as we supported each other through the last three years.”

It’s also an opportunity to highlight some of the gaps in services that still need attention, Davis said. “We’re always at maximum capacity. There was one day in December I believe when we turned away 22 phone calls, referrals to our shelter alone, and we’re just one service organization.” High inflation, near impossible rent increases and higher interest rates for mortgages are only increasing the number of people who are precariously housed, she added.

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