Nearly 30 years ago, a number of people got together in St. Paul with the aim to provide a women’s shelter to the community. In 1991, the current shelter, called the Columbus House of Hope, was created, which, at that time, was funded for 11 beds.
Though the shelter has increased in its number of beds to 20 and has grown to a staff of 27, little has changed in terms of the building space. A tour of the shelter shows it to be a warm, comfortable and supportive environment, with beautifully maintained spaces like a spiritual room, and an adjacent building outside, built in 2014 to provide outreach and school services. But the tour also shows how the staff has had to come up with makeshift solutions to deal with the lack of space, with staff office space doubling to hold storage and donation items, multiple uses for single rooms, one washroom serving three families and little privacy for clients trying to make phone calls.
Federal funding of $90 million across Canada has been announced, out of which the shelter will be trying to access a grant to do an expansion of its building. While $90 million seems like a large amount of money, it will be gobbled up quickly, as many shelters are in need of repair, or need re-vamping in terms of serving a trauma-informed model, as executive director Noreen Cotton explains. Having a larger specialized play spaces for children, more privacy for services, and crucially, transitional housing will hopefully serve the needs of women better.
According to the Domestic Violence Prevention centre, most women will, on average, attempt to leave an abusive relationship between five to seven times before successfully or permanently doing so. Having transitional housing, and later, affordable housing, is a huge step in providing a women a way out of the cycle of domestic violence, while also hopefully, curbing the need for women to access emergency shelters again and again.
From the beginning of the shelter’s construction to now, the St. Paul & District Crisis Association is doing incredible work. While it remains to be seen if the association will be successful in accessing the federal grant to expand its space and add transitional housing, hopefully the people of St. Paul and area will support the association as it undertakes a capital campaign fundraising initiative to raise money for the expansion - to support more women fleeing domestic violence, rather than having to turn them away.
