Interval House of Ottawa is a crisis shelter. We provide crisis shelter for people experiencing violence. At the moment, we do not have alternative interim or second-stage housing available in our city. There is really nothing like that.
What is happening is that women are staying with us sometimes for up to a year. I've been in this field for about 20 years now, and when I first started, the average length of stay in a crisis shelter was eight to 10 weeks. That average has now increased to about four and a half months or five months. There are just no options beyond that. People must wait until they can obtain affordable housing in order to leave the shelter.
However, we as an organization are exploring the possibility of developing additional second-stage housing units in our city to provide that in-between phase when folks leave the emergency shelter and need somewhere to reside temporarily until permanent housing can become available.