'This winter has been unprecedented': How Barrie, Ont.'s homeless shelters are dealing at capacity

Check in any night at the Salvation Army's homeless shelter downtown Barrie, Ont., and it's almost guaranteed to be full.

That means all 46 beds are taken and overflow mats are sprawled out wall-to-wall. Even then, there's still men looking to stay over the Bayside Mission is the only men's shelter in the area.

The shelter,like many in Barrie,has seen a significant spike in use.

"This past year, 2017, we were almost at capacity 97, 98 per cent of the nights,"said executive director Major Doug Lewis. "We can't say no. We cannot say no and turn people away."

Lewis blames it on a lack of affordable housing an issue the fast growing city has been struggling to deal with. It's one of the most expensive placesto rent in the country (the typical two bedroom apartment went for$1,205 in late 2017)and has seen a surge in housing prices, among the biggest in the province from 2016 to 2017.

"The dilemma we have is that we have a housing first approach program but there's no housing," said Lewis.

'We try to exhaust every avenue'

Alan Oakes started staying at the shelter last October. He's noticed how full it has gotten and thinks there's no room for more people.

"There's only so many showers. There's more guys in here now than there ever was,"he said.

Oakes got lucky when hechecked in.There wasone bed left, so he snapped it up. He's in a transition room, where he paysrentand can stay for one year. Some of his friends haven't been as lucky.

"There are times when guys come in and they have no place to go and there's no beds. They just have to turn them away which is kind of sad." He said a 68-year-old friend, recently diagnosed with cancer,was just discharged from the Salvation Army and is now sleeping on a mat on another floor.

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Lewis said that nobody has been turned away and the shelterwill go through a list if full, calling other programs, detox centres and hospitalsto check availability. Oftenif someone hears it is full when they checkin, they will find another place to stay, like a friend's couch.

"We try to exhaust every avenue that we can."

Similarly, Barrie's Joyce Cope House has a policy to not turn any woman away. The house, run bythe Elizabeth Fry Society of Simcoe County, saw a 15 to 20 per cent jumpin the number of women needing emergency shelter this winter.

"In Decemberactually, we were at 110 per cent occupancy," said executive directorJoy Thompson, with all 27 beds and couches in the women's shelter completely full.

"This winter has been unprecedented."

'Wish we didn't have to turn anyone away'

Thompsontoo blames the housing market, asking for affordable units that the women using the shelter would be able to pay for on their own.

Part of Barrie'sown strategy is to create 840 affordablehousingunits by the year 2024. But even those may prove too expensive for those at the shelter. Mayor Jeff Lehman recently acknowledged that more needs to be done to get supportive housing to the homeless.

Some people think that some of the youths are here just because they don't want to be at home ... not everyone is in that certain circumstance. Some people are actually homeless and have nowhere to go.- Jeremy Johnson-Ellis, Youth Haven resident

Lucy Gowers, executive director of Youth Haven, another homeless shelter but for youth ages16 to 24, is pressingto make it a provincialelection issue.

"It's something that not everyone knows about or talks about because unfortunately, if you don't see this happening in your world, you're not really going to and it's really sad to say give it a lot of thought."

She said eight to 10 youth are turned away from Youth Haven every month because it is too full but their councillors work to get the youth into another shelter or make sure they have a place to stay.

"We don't like to turn anyone away and we really wish we didn't have to turn anyone away but sometimes the reality is that we have to."

Jeremy Johnson-Ellis is currently sleeping on one of the three couches in the living room at Youth Haven but is working on gettinglong-term housing. He's having a hard time.

"Depending on where you want to live, sometimes, most times, especially downtown Barrie, it's not the cleanest or the greatest environment for what you're paying," he said."It gets pretty expensive."