A Windsor city councillor believes the bubble is about to burst on the city's homelessness crisis.
"We are at the brink of a real, real, real problem," says ward 2 city councillor Fabio Costante.
Costante says emergency shelters in the region are almost at capacity.
"What we learned is that across the region when we look at all our emergency shelters they are operating at almost 100 per cent capacity and we've seen every single shelter their numbers have increased quite significantly over the past year," says Costante.
He says the shelters are seeing capacity issues even in the warmer climate.
"We can only assume that as weather gets colder those numbers are going to continue to rise and so this is in my view a bubble that is on the verge of bursting when you look at the homelessness crisis in our community, and you look at this perfect storm that has arisen in over the last five or more years," he says.
Costante says the city along with the shelters are looking at ways to deal with the capacity issues.
"We're at a place now where the shelters according to this administrative report at almost 100 per cent capacity so one of the questions that I've asked administration is what do we do when they're all at 100 per cent capacity and they're looking at ways in which to essentially provide a bit more capacity within their existing space, these shelters," says Costante.
Costante who sits on the Community Services Standing Committee met Wednesday morning and discussed a staff report on homelessness and housing.
The report breaks down the increases at a handful of emergency shelters including The United Church of the Downtown Mission, Salvation Army, Welcome Centre Shelter for Women and Families and Essex County Emergency Shelter Program.
In the report, city staff anticipate capacity constraints across the system this winter and believe it will require additional investments in programs such as potential emergency shelter overflow, and other permanent housing solutions including an expansion in rent supplement programs.
The report goes on to say, administration continues to explore costing and feasibility of the potential expansions while in discussions with people experiencing homelessness.
Windsor's Housing Services is awaiting provincial and federal budget announcements to see if additional funds will be provided this winter to support homelessness.