Barrie is marking the fourth annual YIMBY Week.
YIMBY stands for "Yes In My Back Yard," a social movement that has risen up in cities all over North America to counteract NIMBYism, or "Not In My Back Yard." Redwood Park Communities is leading the initiative in Simcoe County.
Redwood is a Barrie-based charity founded in 2009 to create safe, affordable housing in a supportive community.
"Our homelessness numbers are higher than they have ever been as long as we have been counting," says Jennifer van Gennip, Redwood's Director of Communications, referencing the situation in Barrie. "The pandemic has certainly set us back. I don't know that it's a signal of how we've been doing with our policies. But it highlights the need to change things moving forward."
Barrie council recently approved a plan to tackle some social issues around homelessness including addiction and mental health. At the time, Mayor Jeff Lehman said the bigger picture that needs to be addressed is more than just the housing crisis, which he noted was an underlying issue.
“But the lack of support for the reasons why people are experiencing homelessness in the first place, and that is poverty, mental health and addictions, and in some cases past trauma and physical trauma,” he said. “Until we have the services available in our community to support the reasons why people become homeless, it won’t just be enough to get a roof over people’s heads.”
Redwood subscribes to a housing first philosophy.
"This means you give a person a place to live first, and that's a big stabilizer, then a lot of things fall into place," says van Gennip. "The longer you have been homeless, the longer the recovery period is going to be, and that is where supportive housing comes in."
She says supportive housing is where a person who had been homeless is now housed and is getting the support needed to sustain that through partnerships with mental health and addictions agencies.
A great Redwood success story is Lucy's Place, a former hotel on Essa Road that was converted into units for people experiencing chronic homelessness in Barrie.
"It was a way for people to go right from living outside and right into housing."
The project came to be with funding support from different levels of government and Redwood partnering with the Busby Centre.
"What we need more of is supporting housing," says van Gennip. "Those capital dollars have to come from a higher level of government. Municipalities just aren't really set up for those kinds of capital investments."
Banner image: Lucy's Place housing project (Barrie 360)
