As I think I spoke briefly to earlier, shelters have had to reduce capacity. You actually are seeing fewer shelter users and fewer people who are homeless who are able to access resources and have daily interactions with social workers in shelters. I think using shelter workers and using these networks to also reach out to homelessness advocates, who are very grassroots, who work in encampments, who help fundraise to provide basic necessities for encampment residents...and using them to give them information that is accessible, offered in different languages, offered in indigenous languages, letting them disperse to those people who are living on the streets.
A lot of homeless people are actually feeling safer on the streets than in shelters from the spread of COVID. I think it will be a bigger challenge during a pandemic to reach homeless people because of this reduced capacity in shelters. I think it will take a lot of communicating and organizing and taking advantage of these amazing advocates who might not be official shelter workers but are there on the ground and are very willing to help empower homeless people in Canada as mich as possible.