Temporary beds that helped reduce women being turned away from Windsor shelter now being phased out

The Welcome Centre for Women says Windsor declined funding request for 12 additional shelter beds, despite a growing need, CTV Windsor's Sanjay Maru explains.

The Welcome Centre Shelter for Women and Families says eight temporary beds that helped reduce the number of women it could not accommodate are now being phased out after additional funding was denied.

According to Executive Director Lisa Laforet, the shelter turned away 328 women in the final four months of 2025 because no beds were available.

After eight temporary beds were added in January, Laforet said the number of women the shelter could not accommodate dropped by 57 per cent.

Those beds are now being phased out through attrition, meaning once a bed opens up, it will not be filled again.

“I can only assume that when we withdraw those eight beds from the system, that those turnaways will return back to how they were before we added the beds,” Laforet said.

The Welcome Centre says the temporary beds were added earlier this year at the request of city administration to help with cold weather planning.

The shelter later asked the City of Windsor for about $192,000 annually to keep those eight beds open and add four more flexible spaces for women.

But Laforet said the municipal request came after the shelter was denied a separate request to the province for a cost-of-living increase.

According to Laforet, the shelter has not received a cost-of-living increase in five years.

She said years of rising costs without a funding increase have already forced the organization to make internal cuts.

“We have three housing workers that’s been downgraded to two. We have three shelter support workers available to help with anything and everything Monday to Friday that’s been cut down to two,” Laforet said. “We even cut down staff training hours by about 260 hours annually.”

In a news release, the Welcome Centre said its request to the city came after both city administration and the shelter’s own internal data identified a growing need for additional women’s shelter capacity across Windsor-Essex.

The shelter said the funding would have stabilized the eight temporary beds added earlier this year, while also creating four additional flexible beds.

The request also included money for staffing, training, housing supports, and operational needs.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, the costs are never just the beds,” Laforet said.

“To add more beds and more women into the system without resources to support them and being successful would just be creating a warehouse for people, as opposed to a conduit of really well-trained, well-qualified staff who are helping people get out of homelessness,” Laforet said.

In a statement to CTV News, the City of Windsor said it owns the building that houses the Welcome Centre and has allocated municipal and provincial funding toward the operation of the shelter, including 32 beds for single women and 21 rooms for families.

The city said it also pays directly for all utilities and facility maintenance in the building.

“During the past winter, the city responded to an urgent community need by supporting the addition of eight emergency shelter beds specifically for single women,” the city statement reads. “This initiative played an important role in addressing increased demand during the colder months.”

The city said the Welcome Centre later requested additional funding to maintain those beds beyond May and increase the number of additional beds for single women to 12.

“However, all municipal, provincial, and federal funding sources have already been allocated for the current fiscal year, making further financial support above their allotment unavailable at this time,” the city said.

The city also said administration monitors emergency shelter occupancy daily for all population groups, including men, women, couples, families and their pets.

“Currently, there is still sufficient capacity within the broader shelter system to meet the needs of the community,” the city said.

But Laforet said broader system capacity does not always mean women feel safe using every shelter option available.

“If you don’t want to increase funding to the beds, but you want to have the beds, then that does get women into H4, into the Downtown Mission, as opposed to getting into a gender-based shelter where they’ve told us they feel more safe,” Laforet said, pointing to one recent example.

“For a woman, that choice was, ‘I don’t feel safe going to coed shelters. May I sleep in my car in your parking lot?’ So we have women who are saying that they would choose sleeping in their car in their parking lot over going to a co-ed shelter,” Laforet said.

The Welcome Centre describes itself as the community’s only provider of gendered shelter and harm reduction services for women and families.

Laforet said many of the women coming through the shelter have complex needs, including mental health concerns, addictions, chronic homelessness, or long periods of street-level homelessness.

She said the shelter is not only serving single women, but families with children.

“Children usually varies anywhere from 20 to 40 a night,” Laforet said. “The ages vary. We’ve had newborns. We have teenagers.”

Laforet said longer shelter stays are also putting pressure on the system, as affordable housing becomes harder to find and people have fewer places to go after entering shelter.

“We all know what the rent situation is. We all know about the need for affordable housing. We all know about stagnant OW and ODSP rates,” Laforet said.

In a statement, the province said it is making “historic investments” while providing municipalities with tools to ensure people have access to safe accommodations and wraparound supports.

The province said that includes $1.7 billion to improve access to supportive housing, as well as $654 million through the Homelessness Prevention Program.

“This year, we are investing over $16.7 million in the City of Windsor and Essex County through the Homelessness Prevention Program, which the city can use for emergency shelters, outreach, housing assistance, and the creation or operation of supportive housing, based on local needs,” the provincial statement reads.

The province said specific allocations of provincial funding are made by the municipality, not the province, to ensure local needs are addressed.

The City of Windsor said it will continue to monitor shelter occupancy and advocate for additional funding from upper levels of government to meet growing needs in Windsor and Essex County.

Laforet said the Welcome Centre will continue operating 32 beds for single women, but said it is now turning to the community for support.

“We truly did exhaust what we could with available funding pots, with the government funding,” Laforet said. “We know that ultimately the community need exists, whether the government chooses to fund it or not.”