We are very pleased to have been invited to participate in this study, because it accurately reflects what shelters are telling us on the ground. What member shelters are seeing is that women's housing insecurity and the challenges associated with homelessness are a vicious cycle.
These women's journeys are always marked by violent experiences, whether it's violence suffered at a young age within the family or violence from a partner, roommate, or landlord. Most of the time, this pushes women into housing insecurity or into situations of hidden homelessness. This is often driven by violence.
In terms of the spiral or vicious cycle, we see that once women have experienced violence, they find themselves in precarious situations and feel direct impacts on their mental health and their ability to continue holding a job, for example. After experiencing violence or instability caused by having to constantly move from one place to another—whether as a survival strategy to avoid an abuser or because their living environment was violent—they will experience very complex traumas. This can affect their mental health and lead to addiction issues.
These three issues directly impact women's lives. Once they find themselves in a situation of financial insecurity, the vicious cycle begins again, because they risk experiencing violence or exploitation once more and will find themselves in vulnerable situations. Shelters then become essential, because they offer women direct support tailored to their multiple mental health needs, as well as to some of their addiction issues.
What we're really seeing right now is that shelters play a huge role and are stretched to the limit. As a result, they're unable to meet all these needs. As my colleague mentioned, shelters operate to address certain issues affecting women and help them break free from this vicious cycle. However, if they do not have access to affordable housing with community support, women find themselves in situations where they cannot leave the shelter, or in situations where, when they do leave, they will end up—