A local non-profit provider, Association Advocating for Women and Community (AWAC), spoke with Prince George City Council about the challenges a lack of mental health and addictions supports presents for housing providers in the community.
Connie Abe, AWAC’s executive director spoke at Monday night's city council meeting.
“We understand that the challenges in our community are very challenging and oftentimes the focus has been on housing, but we find that through the work we have been doing for the last eight years, this is not only a housing issue this is a mental health and addictions issue,” said Abe.
“The more supports that we wrap around individuals so we can help them with their addiction and mental health, the more successful they will be in obtaining housing and maintaining housing.”
AWAC has been in operation for 28 years, starting in 1994 as a small organization supporting women and girls in the community.
“Over the last eight years, we started to see there was no real structure we were providing individuals coming to our shelter, so we realized we needed to provide more support services to the women coming into our shelter,” said Abe, adding those services now include finding housing.
“Individuals face many barriers when they come to our shelters and we realize a lot of the challenges they face stem from trauma and addiction issues so we have created 15 programs to support individuals coming into our shelter.”
While AWAC still has a women’s only shelter, the organization also changed its format five years ago to include men in its support services.
Relapse is a part of addiction
Abe said the main program AWAC has created is its housing continuum which transitions people from living on the streets and struggling with addiction through various stages of housing and support until they are able to live independently.
“Our continuum allows individuals to move back and forth throughout, so if they go into our Housing Readiness program and relapse, they can go back to our Supportive Recovery Program, restabilize, and then go back into our Housing Readiness program.”
She said from start to finish someone can be in the housing program for up to six years.
“We currently have an individual that has been in our housing program for four years and it has taken that amount of time for him to build trust and to find a passion and find what suits him and work towards those goals.”
AWAC also operates Olive’s Branch which is a 28-unit sober living facility that opened in 2019, and serves people pre and post-treatment.
“We found that individuals that are accessing detox were getting discharged back to the street, and getting into treatment took some time, so we opened Olive’s Branch for this reason,” said Abe.
She said people who are waiting to go to treatment can come to Olive’s Branch and return to stay post-treatment for up to three years.
“We provide programming and support services to the individuals, and it is staffed 24/7.”
Abe said this is why the housing continuum is so important because it operated on the philosophy that relapse is a part of addiction and those who relapse should not be punished for it but supported.
She told the story of a woman who relapsed twice before she was able to move into supportive housing, and after completing a 30-day recovery program, was eventually able to regain custody of her children, went back to school and is now living independently.
“It is our mission to ensure that everybody that wants an opportunity to turn their lives around to recovery that we can help them at every step of the way.”
Losing people to being wait-listed
Abe said one of the challenges facing people suffering from addiction is that there is not enough access to addiction treatment.
She said when evening outreach workers come into contact with people who are ready to go to detox, those people have to wait until 8 a.m. in the morning to make a phone call to see if a bed is available.
Abe said when morning arrives a lot of those people will lose the courage or motivation to phone.
“The ability to access detox at that moment at that time is crucial.”
AWAC’s own programming is also nearing capacity. Its Supportive Recovery Program has nine beds and is half full and its Housing Readiness Program has eight beds and is half full.
Its three supportive housing facilities, Mark’s Place which has 21 units, Olive’s Branch which has 28 units, and Victoria Towers which has eight units, are also all full.
“Olive’s Branch has only been open coming up to four years and we are full and so now we are at a stage where we are getting referrals from Detox and from Prince George Regional Corrections Centre and unfortunately there’s a wait-list and so those individuals - we are losing them.”
She said the community absolutely needs more mental health and addiction services.
“A lot of the individuals that are residing in the encampments don’t want to follow rules – and that is a challenge. But if you address and help addiction and mental health, I think those challenges would subside. The problem, is we don’t have enough services for addiction or mental health.”
No more funding to help men
AWAC also has a 24-hour emergency shelter drop-in which is open to both men and women but it’s separated.
“Unfortunately, at the end of December our men’s drop-in funding has been cancelled so men will no longer be able to access our shelter during the day,” said Abe.
The funding for the service was a part of the city’s homeless service hubs program which provided washroom and storage access to vulnerable people at two sites.
This included washrooms, showers, drop-in space, and enhanced outreach service which was funded with $236,00 through 2022.
“The service hub was an opportunity for us to build relationships with the men of our community because they weren’t able to come into our building prior to that,” said Abe.
“It is unfortunate that funding isn’t available after Jan. 1 because we are no longer going to be able to continue those relationships with the men.”
She said this means men will no longer be able to access support services and meet with the housing workers or with the housing team to provide referrals to detox.
“For me, it breaks my heart that we are not going to be able to connect with those men anymore.”
