Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Rachelle Walker, and I'm the executive director of the Muskoka Women's Advocacy Group. We operate two emergency gender-based violence shelters. We're located in the district municipality of Muskoka, which spans a massive area of almost 6,500 square kilometres.
Our region is a collection of small towns, communities and rural areas. In communities like ours, the barriers abuse survivors face are stark. We have little public transit, patchy cell service, regular hydro outages and a lack of options normally found in larger urban areas. Many shelters across Canada regularly face frustration around the lack of safe and affordable housing choices for survivors. As highlighted by the Women's Shelters Canada study, shelters are often operating above their funded capacity. Frontline staff must extend stays repeatedly simply because there's nowhere feasible for women to go. Shelters end up in overflow positions because the housing system is broken.
Transitional housing is a solid bridge for women, but it can't fix a broken market on its own, and we need more of it. Our agency manages a transitional housing program or second stage, as is sometimes called, with 10 rent-geared-to-income units. This program provides many supports for survivors, but one key component that is impossible to replace is time. Urgency is not empowerment. Women enter our emergency shelters with valid concerns about the unknown but also with relief, and then soon they are overwhelmed because they need to start looking for housing yesterday.
Our housing program offers up to two years' stay. It gives women some breathing room to regain independence, secure employment and safely rebuild their lives, and it works. In the past three years, our transitional program has housed 34 women and their children. In 2023 two women reported that they were returning to their abusers after leaving the program. The other 32 did not, but when women leave shelter or second stage, they encounter a brutal for-profit housing market.
Transitional housing is a vital lifeline, and it allows women time to steady themselves and to strengthen their community, family and friend relationships which have normally been broken by an isolating abuser. They tend to generate real and safe options in that time even when those options aren't perfect. Transitional housing could become a dead end if the federal government doesn't invest heavily in long-term affordable housing stock and what's needed to support it.
If the federal government wants to work toward ending the cycle of violence and poverty, I have two recommendations.
First, look past capital grants. Building structures is only part of the solution. The federal government needs to consider earmarking substantial transfer payments of core operational funding for both emergency shelters and transitional housing. Without operational dollars, we can't pay staff to provide the necessary support to survivors. We can't cover the increasing costs of utilities or make needed repairs.
Second, funding has to take geography into consideration. A survivor's safety shouldn't be determined by where she lives in Canada. We need targeted dollars to expand infrastructure like basic and reliable transportation. For Muskoka, that means transit reaching our geographic edges and beyond, so women aren't forced to choose between isolation or returning to danger.
Financial stress is awful, but to an extent, financial stress can be managed. Living in violence can't. If we want survivors to manage the systemic housing gaps that follow them, of course we need to invest in capital projects but also in minor capital strategies and in the operational needs of shelters, transitional housing and affordable long-term housing.
Thank you.