Flexibility, adaptability and reactivity were the three words, Jenifer Pergentile, the Excutive Director of Allitson’s Out of the Cold, used to describe the challenges Covid-19 has brought to the local community homeless shelter. Being able to make all the fast paced adjustments and meet the expectation of public health and the government have been a challenge for this small shelter. The shelter runs an intake program during the winter where they take people in overnight which could take about 48 people. Though due to the pandemic they were asked to run during the summer a Covid shelter with other local shelters. The Covid shelter had about 46 people but 72% of them were new and never had access to the service before. The shelter usually opens on November 1st, and it closes on April 30^th but they had to delay their start (November 15th) because they did not have enough volunteers.

“This was the first time we ever had to go to ask the city for funds to hire overnight workers. This was a first for us and thankfully the city was able to help” said Pergentile. The amount of active volunteers have sadly been less, but thankfully they have strong and passionate staff. The shelter also runs an outreach program that provides mobile services to people in need in New Tecumseth and the surrounding areas. It provides hygiene supplies, clothing, sleeping bags and blankets, harm reduction supplies and connects people to appropriate services in the area. It also provides additional case management if people are in need of further support.

Mitch McGoey, who started at volunteering at the shelter due to the pandemic, runs both the intake and outreach program making him one of the first people you would see while walking through the front door. He has seen many different changes since starting there especially with the different lockdowns. “As an intake worker, this includes more extensive screening processes for COVID-19 along with wearing more personal protection equipment. It has also limited the abilities of other agencies to work in person with people so we have been facilitating calls, doing forms and assisting in areas where we weren’t as needed previously. As an Outreach worker, my job is constantly shifting. Depending on the level of lockdown I have had to switch from working out of a vehicle and out on foot in the community to primarily working out of our shelter space” said McGoey. He also mentions how with pandemic housing is going to be even harder than it was before.

Jenifer explained a little of what she does at the shelter. She is tasked with writing the policies, procedures, and manuals. She developed all training materials and delivered them. It was all volunteer during that time, but halfway through the first season, the planning committee hired the speaker as the program director. With her as an addiction counselor by education and working in the non-profit sector both publicly and privately for more than 15 years, this job in her own community become a perfect fit.

She also talked about how she was shocked to think there was homeless in her community since many believe most homeliness is in the big city. Though once she was educated by the founder of the Alliston Out of the Cold, she knew she was in the right place.

That is the description she used when talking about how she came into the shelter. With much enthusiasm and passion the shelter was established in Alliston.

As many of us know the pandemic has not made anything easy but it has brought some good. It has brought awareness to us of the people in our community who are struggling even more due to this pandemic and all that is required to help is a little kindness.