The executive director of the Welcome Centre Shelter for Women is moving from behind the desk, to a local motel.
Lady Laforet and her two small children, ages seven and five, entered the shelter on Wednesday as part of the regular intake process and taken to a motel to try and navigate the system to find housing as a single mom.
Her goal is to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing homeless women and single moms.
"We often hear from clients at motels that we don't know what it is to stay at the motel and they are right," says Laforet. "So this won't give us the full experience of that of course but if it gets us a little bit closer to understanding what some of their frontline barriers are, that gets us closer to finding some solutions."
Laforet will have no vehicle and $11 with a goal of trying to find a school for her kids and search for housing while staying at a 250-square foot hotel room.
She tells AM800 News taking her children is about educating them.
"I really look at this as a gift that my kids and I are giving to each other," says Laforet. "The opportunity to learn and to grow as a mom, I think that teaching my children about social issues is definitely going to be a marathon and not a sprint."
Laforet says she will be a homeless single mom for 48 hours, until dinner Friday.
The centre on Bridge St. in Windsor has an on-site emergency shelter for single women with 12 permanent beds as well as five mats on the floor which are always full.
The centre provided short-term emergency shelter at hotels to 415 households in the past 21 months.
If you are a family or couple, then they are supported by the city at area motels and the Welcome Centre provides housing support and assistance.