{"id":31911,"date":"2022-09-15T13:10:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=31911"},"modified":"2022-09-22T17:08:48","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T21:08:48","slug":"high-tea-at-armoury-will-help-inn-from-the-cold-provide-transitional-housing-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/high-tea-at-armoury-will-help-inn-from-the-cold-provide-transitional-housing-options\/","title":{"rendered":"High tea at Armoury will help Inn from the Cold provide transitional housing options"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Newmarket\u2019s Inn from the Cold is on a mission to provide the homeless population in York Region transition into stable housing \u2013 and an upcoming high tea at the historic Aurora Armoury will help the non-profit organization get closer to their goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Armoury at Mosley and Larmont Streets will be the scene of a special high tea on Sunday, September 25, from 12 noon to 3 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tea is the brainchild of Christa MacCauley, Assistant Cook from Inn from the Cold, who felt an autumnal fundraiser for their $2.5 million Capital Campaign would be a great addition to their summer golf tournament and their winter Coldest Night of the Year fundraiser, which invites members of the community to see the real-time struggles of York Region\u2019s homeless population at a most difficult time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at $1.4 million in our Capital Campaign from when we started in October,\u201d says Ann Watson, Executive Director of Inn from the Cold. \u201cThere are so many people in the community who have contributed and it has been quite incredible so far. Our staff really wanted to do something as well, so this tea is really their effort to make the campaign a success.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through the Capital Campaign, Inn from the Cold has secured a plot of land on Yonge Street, just north of Newmarket, for a new shelter space. But, once complete, this will not be an ordinary shelter space; it will include 18 new units of transitional housing to \u201cspecifically serve chronically homeless men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUnfortunately, this is a growing demographic in our community,\u201d says Watson. \u201cTypically, they\u2019re some of the hardest to house individuals and we really want to make a dent into that growing demographic. We do already have a small transitional housing program called Stability Now and we have had a 75 per cent success rate over the long-term in transitioning people from homelessness to transitionally housed to permanently housed. Over the last four years (of Stability Now) we really felt we had this opportunity to build something new. We wanted to really expand the program because it really changes people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe shelter is important because it saves people\u2019s lives but we didn\u2019t want to stop there. Once you\u2019ve got someone in the shelter, you build some rapport and relationships of trust with people, but you\u2019ve got to be able to offer them some way out. Transitional housing seems to be the best tool to move people from homeless to housed. We just really want to build on the success of that program \u2013 and we weren\u2019t going to settle with just building a shelter; we wanted to get that housing in there as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inn from the Cold was one of the first organizations to offer transitional housing to men. Their project was the first one in York Region and it happened quite by chance. They had a tenant in their property who moved out and wondering what to do with the vacant space, they offered a transitional housing pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an immediate success and proved to Inn from the Cold that they had to do more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTransitional housing was kind of the go-to program in the past,\u201d says Watson, who says this more recently took a back seat to a \u201chousing first\u201d trend. \u201cIt was a process that was really pushed for a while. It did have some success, but it\u2019s much more [complicated]. There are so many types of people who become homeless and some just need a light touch and they can be housed again successfully. With chronic homelessness, the level of support that they need to make that transition from homeless to housed is really high. I think we\u2019re circling back to that transitional model as a building block to people being able to manage their own housing once they\u2019re done. The \u2018housing first\u2019 model gives people housing and then provides supports to keep them housed. That works for a lot of people, but for those who require really, really intensive, 24-hour supports, it\u2019s not enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese transitional housing programs, with Housing First, is a perfect marriage. You get people to where they can get into housing and then the other programs that provide Housing First, they just really wrap all the supports that they need to keep them housed, but they\u2019ve already got the basics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first six months of transitional housing can be difficult, she says. \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t feel they\u2019re deserving,\u201d she adds, noting that some people have never before experienced housing stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome never really got to know what \u2018home\u2019 means and how that stability and safety can be building blocks for moving forward,\u201d says Watson. \u201cWhile it may seem like a basic instinct, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a learned instinct. The transitional housing programs are those vehicles to give people time to adjust, to feel they deserve it, to feel what it\u2019s like to come into your space every day, to have control over that space, to sleep in the same bed every night. All of those things that might seem so basic to people, unfortunately there are a lot of people in our community who never get to experience that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe word transition is an important one. For the chronic homeless, they have spent pretty much their entire adult lives, if not their entire lives, experiencing homelessness and instability. Just building routine, building opportunities for them to explore what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Just building that into these transitional housing programs is, I think, the difference that it makes between being homeless and being housed. We don\u2019t want people to be back in the shelter. We want to do it and do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support Inn from the Cold\u2019s capital campaign, tickets for the tea are now available by contacting Martha Barry at 905-895-8889 x221.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newmarket\u2019s Inn from the Cold is on a mission to provide the homeless population in York Region transition into stable housing \u2013 and an upcoming high tea at the historic Aurora Armoury will help the non-profit organization get closer to their goal. The Armoury at Mosley and Larmont Streets will be the scene of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/2022-09-15-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-8iH","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 15:06:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}