Northern shelters aim to house more women, children in 2009

Groups battling homelessness in Canada's North say their priority in 2009 isspecifically tohelp more women and children in need of shelter.

The Yellowknife Homelessness Coalition, which opened the Bailey House transitional facility for men in late 2008, says it plans to address the needs of homeless women and children this year.

"The next community plan included women ... so that is our next priority," coalition co-chair Sandra Turner told CBC News.

"We have until the end of March to identify a project that we can use about $390,000 that we have still within the community plan for women and children."

Turner said the coalition plans to deliver a report card on homelessness this spring. It is also working on acquiring some new property, which could lead to more beds as early as this summer.

In Nunavut, the YWCA and the Baffin Regional Agvvik Society announced last week they will form a partnership on April 1 to be called YWCA Agvvik Nunavut and work on opening Sivumut, a 12-bed homeless shelter for women in Iqaluit.

The Baffin Regional Agvvik Society currently operates the Qimaavik women's shelter in nearby Apex, which has 21 beds.

In the Yukon, the Youth of Today Society has been working on establishing a homeless youth shelter in Whitehorse, to be called Angel's Nest.

Existing shelters full

According tothe most recent figures available from Statistics Canada,published in June 2007, there were 3,008 admissions into 16 northern shelters and transition homes for abused women and their children between 2005 and 2006.

Of those, 1,244 were in Nunavut, 907 in the Northwest Territories and 857 in the Yukon.

In Yellowknife, YWCA officials say their transition home for women and families is currently full, housing more than 100 people, over half ofwhom arechildren. On the home's waiting list are 47 families with 84 children.

At the Centre for Northern Families, an emergency shelter for women in the N.W.T. capital, some occupants have stayed for longer periods of time, as they can't find anywhere else to live, said executive director Arlene Hach.

"Some of the women have lived here ... for years, like three years or four years,"Hach said Monday.

"It's meant to be an emergency shelter, [but] it's turned into permanent housing for women because they don't have options."

When Statistics Canada looked at a single day April 19, 2006 it found 114 women and children living in northern shelters.

About nine outof 10 women living in shelters that day were victims of emotional or physical abuse while the rest were admitted for other reasons, such as housing problems.