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Choices shelter strives to move people in crisis toward stability

January 15, 2026   ·   0 Comments

The Choices Shelter works every day to move people from crisis to stability.

That’s despite lingering financial challenges.

Temporary emergency funding from Dufferin County was required at the end of last year to cover off delays in provincial Homeless and Addiction Recovery Treatment (HART) Hub money.

The first HART Hub payment was received Dec. 22. That was after nine months of waiting, said Keith Ward, the shelter’s board chair.

Ward said the shelter ended up taking less than the maximum emergency funding OKed by council. He said the shelter would not have survived the delays in HART Hub funding without the emergency dollars.

“As it turned out, the September to December period was a very busy one for us at the shelter,” Ward said.

The federal Reaching Home program isn’t providing winter assistance this year as it had in the past. The shelter got about $55,305 from August to December from that program.

The county has yet to match a $30,000 Out of the Cold grant from the Town of Orangeville, he said. That contributes to a funding shortfall.

“A commitment to that $30K for the matching Out of the Cold would certainly be a big help in our little world,” Ward said.

A positive development is that the shelter has gotten more in donations and fees this year than all of last year. Ward said a $50,000 donation was received just before the Jan. 8 meeting. A forecasted 16 per cent increase in donations over last year will easily be surpassed.

“We’re very proud of the way people in Dufferin have supported us,” Ward said.

He said he doesn’t anticipate the shelter will return to the county for more emergency funding. They’ve been very open about their financial position and their intention to be sustainable.

Jaime Edge, the shelter’s executive director, said Choices has become, in the last two years, a crucial component of Dufferin County’s response to homelessness. Between April 2025 and December 2025, Choices supported 77 unique individuals. Thirteen were youths and 64 were adult men, she said. In that period, 33 people were housed or re-housed, she said. Among those were six youths and 27 men.

“Every day our staff worked to move people from crisis toward stability through housing navigation, referrals, and coordinated supports,” she said.

Councillor Fred Nix, who is also Mono’s deputy mayor, said Choices staff has said the most financially viable avenue for the shelter is consolidation to a single facility. But he’s also heard that consolidation would provide accessibility problems. He asked what was the accessibility problem.

“If we can turn a surplus with a model that has the separated functions, then we simply don’t need to do that (consolidate) and we avoid those negative consequences,” Ward said.

He said the shelter is all about cost-effectiveness and adequately meeting social need.

“If there’s such a way to do it, great,” Ward said. “But we haven’t seen that.”

Edge said they assist people who come from mixed traumas, different addictions issues, and who are of different ages. Those are factors that complicate consolidating men and women or varying ages and experiences.

“Age is always going to be a factor in us having a mixed space or a shared space,” she said. “There are sometimes where someone has experienced abuse or trauma and having them with the opposite gender, obviously, would not be conducive.

“Those are some of our concerns in terms of a mixed-use space.”

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