Supportive Housing Advocacy Waterloo Region is a group of faith-based organizations, community leaders, and concerned citizens. Trinity United Church is happy to support this group by providing an online presence on this website.
Supportive Housing Advocacy Waterloo Region
Who is SHAWR?
We are a group of everyday people from various faith (and some non-faith) communities across Southwestern Ontario. Across our diverse group, we agree that Housing Justice is needed in Ontario and Canada, and that requires a comprehensive approach to combatting the growing housing crisis. From emergency shelter support to creating permanently affordable housing to fighting the opioid crisis and more.
When does SHAWR meet?
We meet two Wednesdays a month on Zoom to share our work advocating for housing and mount shared advocacy projects. We welcome you to join our meetings.
What is SHAWR doing now?
In March of 2024, we began an e-mail campaign to our elected leaders urging them to come together and work towards a permanent solution to the problems creating chronic homelessness.
How can I help?
Send the letter and urge your friends to as well.
Joining our work in advocating for Housing Justice for All by joining our group. Contact Adam Cresswell or Barbara Hill for details.
Overview
Our advocacy project is intentionally focused on the front end of the housing continuum. It was spawned and informed through conversations with service providers in transitional, supportive housing, with agency leaders, faith leaders, bureaucrats, elected leadership.
Our Focus
Without judgement, shame or blame, we cannot ignore the impact of the mental health and the drug crisis on homelessness and the staggering rate of growth in encampments and shelters. It is coast to coast, cross-border, and being documented.
We believe we are witnessing a humanitarian crisis of homelessness and encampments.
Homelessness will not end without a strategy to actively address the mental health and drug crisis. A roof overhead is not enough.
We’ve proven community based ‘solutions of support’ for the mental health and addiction crisis is critical to transitioning our most vulnerable out of encampments and shelters to stabilize their lives, to be successfully housed.
Many vulnerable folks will always need ongoing support.
We have excellent wrap around solutions that prove the model works.
The growing demand appears to outweigh current support systems; encampments continue to grow year over year.
There appears to be a human resources shortage of skilled supports, the medical, mental health and addiction workers to support a growing cohort of people harmed by the opioid and synthetic drug crisis.
Supports are paramount to upstream prevention.
We are asking the Provincial and Federal governments to come together with funding to help address the human resources shortage required to support this growing epidemic; it is a national crisis.
