Dear friends, supporters we need your help, 

For over two years our city and community have plead with officials at the City and BC Housing to recognize the equity gap in the provision of permanent, safe housing for women and women-led families fleeing abuse and sexual violence or without housing in Vancouver.

Finally, we heard last week, possibly for the first time in Vancouver's history, our Mayor Ken Sim acknowledge the atrocity and THE crisis within a crisis.

We have articulated 2021 research that clearly states 25% of homeless individuals have dependants while staff maintain the figure is just 3% derived from their PIT surveys that fail to analyze the gap having zero questions pertaining to family composition or needs.

Women and their families are forced daily to choose between homelessness and abuse and under pressure to accept the danger of sexual violence, separation from their children and prolonged impermanence while single, adult males are continuously prioritized for supportive housing.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

The Kitsilano Coalition has a tool in their belt but is in need your support if we are to change this fate for women + women-led families in neighbourhood of Arbutus/8th in Vancouver.

The site proposed by BC Housing excludes families, children, women-led families + targets males only with the need of mental health supports. This despite the tower being planned RIGHT next to a temporary shelter for women fleeing violence, one that focuses on recovery + the reuniting of mothers + their babies.

Listen here to the Executive Director Sancta Maria Home pleading with Council to protect the centre and the outcomes of these very vulnerable women and their families.

To highlight one particular atrocity listen how she describes the "due diligence" BC Housing applied to the women in care. They met with the SMH and in fact said the women could be housed there alongside the single men in the (non recovery, mental health oriented) facility without medical services, but in order to do so they would have to put their children, who they would have just been reunited with, in foster care.

Here is a story on how badly that works out for many women and girls.

Please consider financially supporting the Petition launched by the Kitsilano Coalition to put a stop to the currently contemplated format of the site, to allow Council and the city staff to put to good use the language provided in the MOU pertaining to the site that actually DOES contemplate families and bring a solution that will be a win for women and women-led families fleeing sexual violence in Vancouver as well as save the Sancta Maria Home.

Contribute HERE.

Thank you

Parents4TCP