The manager of homelessness and housing support for the City of Windsor is confident they have the spaces in their emergency shelter system to get through the winter without having to open additional warming centres.
Jennifer Tanner says right now across Windsor and Essex County, there are 197 emergency shelter beds that serve men, women, couples, families, and their pets.
The shelter beds are offered by the Welcome Centre, the Downtown Mission, the Salvation Army, and the emergency shelter program in Essex County.
"In addition to that, we have 100 drop-in spaces at the Homeless and Housing Help Hub, or H4 as we call it, the Essex County Homelessness Hub, and the Downtown Mission. So these aren't shelter beds, but those are overnight spaces that people can go to," says Tanner.
She says city staff monitor the shelter and drop-in data every single day and have a plan to meet any increased need that arises.
"We have some options to increase spaces within those existing spaces. Nothing we can announce at this point," she says.
Tanner notes that when the temperature dropped Sunday night and into Monday morning, the emergency shelter system was only at 84 per cent capacity.
"So we're pretty confident that we have the right number of spaces to get us through this winter without having to open up specific warming centres as we have in past years," she says.
As part of Windsor's Strengthen the Core plan, the city's H4 expanded its hours of operation to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.