Survivors of domestic abuse who seek a safe haven may not find space in Ottawa women’s shelters.
Domestic abuse is widespread in Ottawa, according to Staff Sgt Lyse Fournier, of the partner assault section of Ottawa Police Service. “It makes up a good portion of our calls for service,” Fournier says.
Not much has changed since the 2008 Vital Signs survey conducted by the Community Foundation of Ottawa reported that 5,000 women were turned away from shelters in 2007.
Most shelters are hard-pressed to find extra room for people trying to flee violent relationships, and most spaces are overcrowded.
“I do know shelters are always booked. They always need more spaces,” Fournier says.
Lula Adam, public education co-ordinator at Interval House, a refuge for women in Ottawa, says overcrowding is a major problem which prevents her shelter from providing important services. The shelter is located in a 100-year-old house and serves 100 women and 150 children each year.
“We cannot do any more with the room that we have. We are at max in terms of what we can take, whether it’s in donations, whether it’s space, offices, whatever it is. It’s very difficult.”
Although Interval House indicates that it tries to be as accessible as possible, the shelter cannot accommodate all women.
The shelter plans to build a new facility because it costs too much to repair the aging home and make it accessible. The building’s stairwells and its one wheelchair accessible room make some women hesitant to seek refuge there.
“We’ve had women with mental health issues. We’ve had women with wheelchairs and with vision issues . . . We know that a lot of the times when you indicate that you’re multi-level, women are hesitant.”
The new building will cost $2.3 million and will be funded by the Ministry of Community and Social Services. It will include 10 additional beds, more programming space and a multimedia room. The facility is expected to open in 2011.
Adam says the new shelter will hopefully be more accessible to disabled women.
Although a plan for the new Interval House is still in the works, a viable solution to the accessibility problem would be to build the entire shelter on one floor, or to have an elevator.
“We need to be more accessible . . . For the disabled community, this will mean another shelter that they can access.”
Interval House isn’t the only women’s shelter that cannot accommodate all women in need.
Nelson House sometimes goes over capacity, says Michelle Reis-Amores, the shelter’s executive director. Although she says the shelter is not overcrowded, there is not always room for extra children.
But the shelter always finds space for women in need. When a woman cannot be housed in Nelson House, the facility works with other shelters to find space, or contacts the city to put women up in a hotel until space becomes available.
“We don’t turn women away,” Reis-Amores writes in an email.
She adds that the only way the shelter could accommodate more women would be by building additional housing space, but the shelter currently has no plans to do so.
Both Adam and Reis-Amores say that overcrowded shelters are a result of widespread domestic abuse.
“Women are seeking shelter because violence against women is a reality,” Reis-Amores says.
Although Interval House offers a safe environment for women and their children, Adam hopes the need for the shelter will eventually dissipate.
“Our hope is that we don’t need Interval House in the future, that the need for it has ended because there is an end to violence against women. Every shelter worker’s dream is that we’re out of a job,” Adam says.