Follow Along As Family Shelter Executive Director Stays In A Shelter With Her Children

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From Facebook

The Welcome Centre Shelter for Women and Families has been supporting families experiencing homelessness for years, with no actual shelter to do it. Providing supportto those families the City of Windsor shelters at area hotels, the agency struggles to educate the public that hotel stays as shelter are not a vacation

Shelter Executive Director, Lady Laforet, is sheltering herself and her two daughters, aged 7 and 5 at one of these area hotels for the next two nights and three days, in an effort to gain a better understanding of the daily challenges the hotel set-up presents to families.

Dropped off with no vehicle, $11 in cash, and a mission to try and get her kids to school, search for housing, and access area services from a 250 square foot hotel room Laforet hopes to bring attention to family homelessness in our community and the impacts of an antiquated and unsafe sheltering plan for families.

“Everyday families are falling into a crack in our system, and it’s a pretty dark one; less visible doesn’t mean less vulnerable,” said Laforet. “More than 250 families this year will access motels as shelter; unsafe, not staffed fully, and under-resourced- that’s not ok, and we can do better”.

Laforet plans to navigate the housing market, attempt to make contact with units to view, and conduct Facebook Live interviews with area agencies also supporting women and families.

The Welcome Centre provided short-term emergency shelter at a hotel to 415 households in the past twelve months, and of that, 42% of individuals were kids aged 15 and under. Each household is supported with basic needs, housing assistance and limited staff support to get them out of shelter and back into the community.

Looking for a permanent and larger shelter location where families can be supported 24 hours a day is top of the list for ways Laforet says families can be better supported. “Single men and women in the shelter system are supported at 24 hour staffed and efficient shelters, but 350 kids and their caregivers are on their own at a motel? It doesn’t make sense; it never has. But here we are, and we need to put better plans into place to support these families until we are in a new building”.

You can follow her journey on their Facebook Page here.