Hamilton homeless shelter residents say living conditions are ‘deplorable’

Residents of a Hamilton homeless shelter say they are living in deplorable and unsafe conditions.

Brenda Hind has been living at the Good Shepherd shelter on Main St. near Emerald St. since it opened as a temporary facility in March.

“We are surrounded by asbestos that we breathe in all night,” Hind said. “We sleep with bed bugs. Mice crawling on our faces. One of the residents woke up the other night with a mouse right on their face. There are feces all over their bed.”

She said staff are overworked and undertrained. Hind is also diabetic and said even access to her insulin is problematic and believes her medication was stolen by other residents.

The Good Shepherd said since the facility opened, there have been two overdoses at the shelter, luckily no one died.

Fifty-eight women live at the shelter.

Community advocates said it’s no surprise so many people would rather live in tents than in a shelter in Hamilton.

“This is why people do not want to go into shelters,” said Kojo Damptey of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion. “What kind of city are we when we do this? And the people that make the decisions don’t even know why people don’t want to live in such conditions.”

Katherine Kalinowski from the Good Shepherd admits there have been problems at the location but says they have tried to make the facility as safe and comfortable as possible. “There probably is asbestos in the building but we are not aware of any concerns about the exposure that would be a hazard to the folks in the building. When we took over the building to make it a shelter there was definitely a lot of rodent mice activity but that has been largely addressed, we have pest control.”

Kalinowski says emergency shelters are never the solution and says everyone has a different experience at the facility.

In a statement to CHCH News, the city of Hamilton says it’s satisfied that the Good Shepherd is taking appropriate measures to ensure residents are safe and comfortable. Both the city and Good Shepherd say they will be looking into these complaints.

The future of the shelter will be before council in June.