Overview - "What we do!"

The Well-Come Home Emergency Women's Shelter is a program of services to homeless women 18 years of age and over, developed and operated by the Well-Come Centre for Human Potential. Embracing a 'housing first' strategy, the primary service offered is a place to live versus a place to receive treatment.

The shelter is committed to providing a safe, welcoming and inclusive space for up to 11 homeless women. An integrated, anti-racist, anti-oppressive feminist service delivery system is utilized to promote empowerment, dignity, privacy, respect and independence for all residents. As there is only one facility in Windsor to accommodate homeless women, the shelter is open to all women whether or not they are using drugs or alcohol.

The vast majority of residents are dealing with multiple oppressions including sexism, heterosexism, classism, racism, ableism, addiction, mental health, physical illness and the dangers of working in the survival sex trade. Because of these multiple levels of oppression women often enter the shelter feeling depressed, dependent and lacking in self-confidence. The shelter's challenge is to reverse this societal damage and to provide women in crisis with the social and emotional support to feel strong and capable.

The shelter considers women's poverty and homelessness to be a political phenomenon and a problem of our society rather than an individual problem that pathologizes women. As such, the shelter offers opportunities for individual development, politicization, and feminist empowerment with an emphasis on self-help and self-reliance.

Group and individual discussions between staff, residents and volunteers provide women with an opportunity to develop a deeper political analysis of women's issues. Consciousness-raising of this sort is done in an effort to diminish isolation, shame, and self-blame and to promote social support, re¬education, empowerment, politicization and community intervention.

• To provide women with an environment that is conducive to identifying goals and developing strategies to achieve these goals.
• To work towards long-term solutions to homelessness including the attainment of safe and affordable housing, and the eradication of poverty, gendered violence, and all other forms of oppression.
• To help women and the community at large to see the connections between homelessness, sexism, classism, and larger political issues.
• To uncover and eliminate all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways to minimize, deny, or avoid dealing with the racism and other forms of oppression present in our organization.
• To protect the privacy and confidentiality of shelter residents and their personal information.
• To provide safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.
• To be mindful of location by being aware of race, ethnicity, age, class, sexuality, ability, religion and other aspects of each resident's situation and responding with these in mind.
• To engage in political empathy based on recognition of the woman's political plight
• To assist women in seeing the commonality between her situation and the situation of depressed women living in poverty in an effort to link poverty and the problems that come with it to oppressive social structures and no the lives of individual homeless women.
• • To focus on the process of service delivery as well as the outcome.