Libra House shelter feels more like home with help from grant

When Janet ODonnell received a $70,000 federal grant, she did something shes never done before she bought all new furniture.

ODonnell is the executive director of Libra House, a safe house for women and children experiencing violence or abuse in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L. The $70,000 grant from Employment and Social Development Canada arrived after five years of planning and constructing the organizations new five-bedroom emergency shelter, ODonnell said.

The federal money meant the building, completed in February 2013, would be outfitted with entirely new bedroom and office furniture as well as appliances. ODonnell says this was a big moment for Libra House, which had relied on community furniture donations since it opened its doors in 1985.

The grant was handed out under the Homelessness Partnering Strategy, which provides $119 million a year to address local homelessness needs, including womens shelters and support services, according to officials at Employment and Social Development Canada.

Local fundraising covered the bulk of the $800,000 that went towards the construction of the new emergency shelter, ODonnell said. Libra House raised money through dinners, donation jars around town, bake sales and community music jams, she said.

"We exhausted every idea we could come up with to raise funds," she said. "[The furniture] was one less thing that we were going to have to be out bake sale-ing for."

The federal grant and the fundraised money came together to create a space that provides residents with both privacy and autonomy, ODonnell said.

"The residents have expressed that they feel comfortable here and they love it."

Women seeking shelter need a sense of comfort, rather than an environment that looks and feels like a "hostel or some sort of detention centre," said Emma Sharkey, provincial coordinator for the Transition House Association of Newfoundland and Labrador.

"These are women who have experienced a lot of trauma," she said. "It's important to have that sense of home Certainly having a decent looking environment really goes a long way to creating that feeling."

A recent national survey by the Canadian Network of Women's Shelters and Transition Houses shows that a comfortable atmosphere is needed in these organizations, said Lise Martin, executive director of the network.

Women and children who participated in the survey wrote that their needs included "a roof over my head" and "warmth, food and everything a person needs to survive," Martin said.

Of the 246 shelters across Canada that participated in the network's survey, a significant number said providing housing was a concern, Martin said.

Grants provide the federal government with an opportunity to help these underfunded and over-serviced shelters, Sharkey said.

"A lot of [shelters] really do struggle to make ends meet, and that's where grants are really important for helping tide things over, or in the case of Libra House, where they were able to really expand on their services by purchasing new furniture and appliances," she said.

Besides improving finances and services, federal grants are also an "investment" in communities, said Libra House's O'Donnell.

"As we evolve and communities are growing, there needs to be more services like this," she said. "It's important that the federal government is involved in what's happening in the communities."

Vanessa King is a 4th-year journalism student at Carleton University in Ottawa. This story is part of a project by the Carleton School of Journalism on federal spending announcements in 2013.