A member of Windsor City Council wants better information around how many people experiencing homelessness in this area are in that situation due to mental health or addiction issues.
During Monday's meeting, council voted in favour of a motion from Ward 8 Councillor Gary Kaschak directing administration to send letters to several upper-level government ministries as part of ongoing engagement around funding and other supports to address homeless issues.
The motion included a friendly amendment from Ward 6 Councillor Jo-Anne Gignac, who asked that administration look for opportunities to gather information regarding mental health and addiction issues to help guide the city in how funding is directed to address the problems.
Gignac pointed out they've been investing millions to address the problem and says they want to be able to indicate that the investments in these various programs are 'moving the needle' in the right direction.
"It's not an issue of people simply being homeless. We need to get the background information. The friendly to the initial motion was to be able to get more specific in terms of the questions we ask when we do a Point in Time reach out," she says.
The motion followed a discussion around the 2024 Point in Time Count report delivered to Monday's council meeting, which indicated 672 people are experiencing homelessness, the majority of whom reported to have lost their housing due to financial hardships, unaffordable housing options, landlord conflict, and relationship breakdown.
The 2024 PiT Count builds on previous efforts and supports ongoing work to assess the impact of local, provincial, and federal responses to homelessness.
Gignac says if you look across Ontario, you're going to see cities that are worse off than Windsor when it comes to the issues that fall under the homelessness banner.
"But guess what? You need to define under that banner what the components are, so whatever programs you adopt, the needle starts going in the right direction," she says.
Gignac says if we're going to make a dent in these things, we need to know specifically what issues we're looking at.
"Do we need more of what's termed affordable homes, and what would that affordable home look like? In terms of the taxes you would pay, the utilities you would pay, and the initial cost if you're looking at purchasing a home or leasing an apartment," she says.
Among the 388 individuals or families surveyed who also met the federal definition of homelessness, 279, or 72 per cent met the federal definition of chronic homelessness, which is when an individual experiences homelessness for at least six months.
The PiT Count-conducted in October 2024-provides a standardized snapshot of homelessness in a community on a single night and includes a street count of individuals staying in emergency shelters, domestic violence shelters, transitional housing, provincially funded institutions, and unsheltered locations such as streets, parks, and encampments.
OrgCode was hired by the City of Windsor to conduct the count, which is part of an updated national effort coordinated by the Government of Canada under the Reaching Home strategy, which requires communities to conduct homelessness enumerations.
The next PiT street count will occur in October 2025, and a full survey will happen again in October 2027.