HOMELESS BATTLE BIG CHILL
Street Help to stop accommodations
Andrew Ducharme tossed his damp hair as he reached for a cigarette Sunday morning at the Street Help homeless centre.
Ducharme, 25, had just taken a shower after spending the night out of the cold and off the streets.
With no other place to go other than the Downtown Mission, he said he prefers staying at Street Help.
“I hang out at the Windsor Youth Centre and Windsor Youth Centre is just about two blocks over,” Ducharme said. “It’s ideal to come here. We get to eat what we want when we want (and) there’s no limits on how much food each person can have.”
A cement finisher by trade, he says it’s hard to find work during the winter months.
“I’m a working man and I like to work outside,” he said.
“It’s hard to make money out there. I make my money in the summertime,” said Ducharme, who’s lived in Windsor since he was 11 years old. “Everybody wants to pay cash so there’s no unemployment for me.”
Ducharme admits this is probably the hardest winter he’s experienced in a long time.
“I hate the cold. I was born in Florida.”
Maurizio Gidillini owns his own home yet he’s spent his nights on the street or at shelters for the past year. He can’t access his property because there’s an inspection order requiring him to clean the place up. Gidillini says people have called him a hoarder.
“Canadian Mental Health came over one day and the fire department came and did an inspection because my neighbour’s don’t like me, or my mother, whoever,” Gidillini said. “They said it’s too dangerous … so they shut everything off. I’ve got no hydro in the house and no gas.”
He feels overwhelmed and doesn’t know where to start to fix the situation.
“I’ve got a lot of stuff I wanna not throw away,” he said. “I want to give it away to the Goodwill or something.
“I collected that stuff on the side of the road and now I’m going to throw it away? It just doesn’t make sense. I feel like a knucklehead. A year later this is where we’re at.”
And he said it’s hard to keep warm this winter. But he feels comfortable and welcome at Street Help.
Gidillini and Ducharme are two of dozens of men and women staying overnight at the centre during the recent bitter cold weather. But that refuge will be short-lived as Windsor Fire and Rescue has said overnight accommodation must end after this weekend.
Fire officials attended Street Help on Friday, ordering them to stop allowing overnight accommodations, before offering a temporary resolution, which allowed people to stay at the centre over the weekend.
The city sent out a news release late Friday evening saying, “As Street Help is not licensed for overnight accommodations, fire has worked to implement safety measures to allow Street Help to remain open, short term as an overnight warming centre … as a short term solution during this extreme cold snap.”
Jelena Payne, community development and health services commissioner, said people should not be on the streets particularly in these extreme cold temperatures.
“We want to remind people that there are three licensed shelters in our community that have the capacity to assist people in need of shelter and other services,” Payne said.
Those shelters are the Downtown Mission, Salvation Army and Welcome Centre Shelter for Women.
Street Help volunteer Anthony Nelson said the centre has averaged 14 to 16 people staying overnight recently, including several women who came in out of the cold Saturday night.
“The men and women were segregated and a female volunteer stayed overnight as well,” said Nelson, who says most people call him Big Anthony. “They have nowhere to go. They were inside and they were very happy to be inside somewhere nice and warm.”
Centre director Christine Wilson-Furlonger has vowed to fight to keep the homeless overnight, adding that many clients have been barred from other agencies for a variety of reasons.
“These are men who do not fit into the other shelter’s accommodations,” she said.
Gidillini said he’s being kicked out of the Salvation Army’s emergency hostel for men.
“I got caught smoking on the property. They kicked me out for a couple days,” he said. “And then there’s a couple people that don’t like me that work there so they don’t want to register me in there.”
Gidillini said if he didn’t have Street Help to go to he would be forced to see if he could go back to the Salvation Army or the Downtown Mission.
They have nowhere to go. They were inside and they were very happy to be inside somewhere nice and warm.