The Anglican Diocese of Ottawa and its parishes have provided support to help do that in various ways. And the parish of St. Barnabas, which is also located in downtown Ottawa, has played a key role by welcoming their neighbours into their space.

After the fire, St. Luke’s Table quickly relocated to the Bronson Centre and continues to operate from that location while St. Luke’s is being renovated and restored, but Belong Ottawa is only able to use the space on weekdays. Last winter, when the program received some additional funding to open on Saturdays, the Rev. Canon Stewart Murray, Incumbent at St. Barnabas invited them to use the parish hall. With that funding renewed this winter, they will again be able to open on Saturdays at St. Barnabas.

Murray told Crosstalk that St. Barnabas is very happy to host St. Luke’s. As a parish in the downtown core, he and parishioners witness the growing need for the services the community ministries offer to help people struggling with issues such as poverty and addiction. He says he has occasionally had to call the police or ambulance when he couldn’t rouse someone sleeping near the church. “I think at least they can get connected to services through St. Luke’s. They can come and they know it’s there.” It’s good to feel like St. Barnabas can be part of offering help beyond providing for immediate or basic needs, he said. The hall was built in the 1990s so it is up-to-code and accessible.

Robinson said that Belong Ottawa does provide a meal to the people who come to St. Barnabas on Saturdays, but staff have observed that what people are most hungry for is social connection. “They’ve probably all got some sort of housing like a rooming house or supportive housing or their own apartment,” she said. “It’s really about loneliness and breaking isolation….

That’s what Belong Ottawa does, as much as anything, and I always say it’s almost as important as anything….. Because we know loneliness is really bad for health.” She and the staff have always known that intuitively, she added, but noted that post-pandemic there is much more research that backs that up.

St. Barnabas also hosted women from Belong Ottawa’s The Well last winter for two afternoons a week when they were displaced during post-flooding repairs at St. John the Evangelist. “They were really kind and generous to us at St Barnabas because they opened up to us and said that we could offer the women-only programming during the week while we were displaced from The Well,” said Robinson.

This winter, St. Barnabas will be helping another Anglican Community Ministry, Cornerstone Housing for Women. The parish will be hosting women from Cornerstone’s nearby MacLaren Street residence two afternoons a week while that building is undergoing renovations to address a mould problem.

Martine Dore, Cornerstone’s director of programs and services, said that the first part of the renovation required closing down the community room and kitchen at MacLaren. “It’s the only place in the building where women can gather as a group to eat together, to cook together, to play bingo, to have fun, to have conversation. For many of the women, they don’t have a TV in their room, so that’s where they come and watch TV with their housemates.”

St. Barnabas is just down the street, so they reached out to ask if they might be able to rent some space where the women could come together, have tea, celebrate community, play games…” St. Barnabas invited them to come to the church to discuss the possibility with Canon Murray. Dore and the manager of MacLaren went not knowing that they would arrive at the end of a mass and the usual a teatime that follows. “They invited us in and they were the most welcoming group of people. It made us feel so comfortable and confident that we’d made the right decision.”

The women from the MacLaren residence have started meeting at St. Barnabas two afternoons a week. “We have the space for a couple hours and our residents come down and it’s wonderful. … One day our wires got crossed and we ended up coming with some of our residents at another one of St. Barnabas’ teatimes. And the residents had the exact same experience Alison and I did, where they were welcomed into the community to have tea, goodies, and it was just such a wonderful experience for us all.”

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That is only one of the challenges facing a staff working hard to maintain services as they deal with steep food inflation, steadily increasing demand for their services and a shortage of properly trained staff.

Amber Bramer, director of development and communications, says Cornerstone has no choice but to appeal to the community in two ways—asking for financial donations and lobbying governments for more funding. “We’re trying really hard to get more corporate giving,” she says. “Government funding is just not what it used to be.”

Even the good news of a new supportive housing residence at 44 Eccles Street comes with a challenge. The new residence building has been undergoing renovations and is on track to open late this year or early next.

Four more chefs will be needed to provide food—three meals a day—to the 46 residents at Eccles Street as well as the emergency shelter, Booth Street and Princeton Avenue locations. The number of women served will go up from 100 to 150.

Food costs increased by 18 per cent last year, and they are on track for a similar or even larger increase this year. To meet the increased cost, a special campaign to raise $40,000 through the Giving Tuesday program has been under way.

Food service is efficiently supplied out of one location—the Booth Street Residence where there is a commercial kitchen—to the shelter and other locations, including Eccles Street when it opens.

“We see a whole new landscape of people needing support,” Bramer says. “We see more people suffering from abuse and disorders, more not being able to access the right support [to prevent] them from going back into homelessness. It’s why our supportive housing model is so important. And 44 Eccles Street is a tangible way we can make a real difference.”

Unfortunately, providing the right support is another challenge. “People aren’t getting the right training for dealing with the mental illness and health issues that are in our sector,” Bramer says.  She calls for more government funding to train front-line social services specialists. 

The emergency shelter has seen a huge increase in refugee claimants. Its 60 beds are occupied every night and frequently the shelter has to try to find alternative accommodation in City of Ottawa overflow facilities.  Adding extra sleeping units is not feasible.

Cornerstone’s McPhail Residence is specifically designed to support refugees, but its capacity of six rooms means finding help elsewhere.

Cornerstone, along with other agencies, has struggled since April when the loss of $1 million in federal pandemic funding coincided with a reduction in new budget funding from the Ontario government. Queen’s Park allocated only 0.4 per cent of new homelessness funding to Ottawa. Toronto got 60 times more, while being three times larger than Ottawa.

Since then, agencies including Cornerstone have worked through Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa to ask the Ford government to reconsider. The alliance has launched an “Ottawa Needs More Campaign” on its website, urging residents to write to the premier and housing minister.

In her own letter to the premier and housing minister, Kaite Burkholder Harris, executive director of the Alliance, says the funding levels are deeply inequitable and unless changed they will result in a reduction or even closing of some services across the city.

Cornerstone Housing for Women is a Community Ministry of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.

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Cornerstone faced unprecedented pressures in the past year. Aside from the pandemic, the emergency shelter had to move while Cornerstone’s O’Connor Street building was renovated, and just when the women were able to move back to O’Connor, the building was surrounded by the infamous protest in downtown Ottawa for three weeks.

Now, however, Davis said, Cornerstone has had a “reprieve and there is a sense of hope across the organization. This spring Cornerstone focused on providing trauma-informed training for staff across our organization, offering sessions on anti-racism, anti-oppression, gender-based violence, and harm reduction. Throughout the pandemic, staff had to navigate various crises with little time for training or reprieve. On our path of recovery and healing from these past two years, we remain committed to equipping our staff with the knowledge and tools needed to care for vulnerable women in Ottawa.”

Cornerstone is also planning to host an in-person meet and greet with Davis, who came on at the height of the pandemic and outbreaks and has not been able to meet many people in person yet. Please Save the Date July 16 and watch for more information closer to the date.

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