An Edmonton woman who tried to flee an abusive relationship ended up back where she started in part due to a lack of shelter space.
Chelsea Brown said she was strangled, kicked, hit with objects, even shot during the six-years she spent with her ex-boyfriend but fear of him kept her from leaving.
“If he can shoot me, what’s going to stop him from coming here and shooting my family?” she told CTV News Edmonton.
A year and a half ago, a couple months after having a baby with her ex, Brown said she was suicidal and decided she and her son had to leave.
She said her boyfriend frequently took her phone away so she used a laptop hidden under her bed to contact the EPS Domestic Abuse High Risk Team (DAHRT).
“Not even three or four days later, they came knocking on the door and rescued me from my situation. They had found he had a warrant out for his arrest for a previous assault on me.”
Brown and her son left their apartment but couldn’t find a women’s shelter with space.
“I kept getting told, ‘We have no room, we have no room, we have no room, we have no room.’”
She ended up at a motel, where she struggled to find and keep government funding.
Then before Christmas of last year, she heard a knock at the door.
“It was him and then I was stuck in this abusive cycle again with him until the April 10 incident.”
That incident was Brown being hospitalized with a ruptured spleen.
“I should never be put in a situation like that,” she said.
Majority of people turned away from shelters
Brown’s experience of being turned away from shelter is a common one.
1,500 of the more than 2,000 people who requested to stay at Edmonton’s largest emergency shelter this year couldn’t because of a lack of space.
“What’s happening in our emergency shelters is we have no place to move people. And of course, we’re not going to say, ‘Your 30 days are up, you’ve got to leave,” said Leslie Allen, executive director of WIN House.
Allen said more affordable housing and second-stage shelters – where survivors can stay up to two years – are desperately needed.
“I think retrofitting some buildings is probably going to be our best option because that can be done relatively quickly.”
The executive director of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters agrees.
“Housing is a huge barrier right now. It’s the number one issue as far as us being able to support women,” Catherine Champagne told CTV News Edmonton.
Champagne calls the sector “chronically underfunded” and says it is advocating to the government for more resources.
“We haven’t seen an increase in funding in a decade and I know that my life is way more expensive than it was 10 years ago,” she said.
People turned away still offered help: province
The children and family services minister declined an interview with CTV News Edmonton but his press secretary wrote in an email “no one is ever turned away from a women’s shelter without being offered help.”
Ashli Barrett said people are provided support including financial services while they wait for shelter space.
She said the province spends nearly $56 million on women’s shelters annually and the government is delivering on a promise to provide an additional $10 million.
$5 million of that was rolled out in March, funding more than 100 beds across the province as well as programming and grants.
As well, she said the province recently announced spending up to $150 million on innovative housing solutions.
Shelters working together
Edmonton-area shelters are currently working on a 10-year strategic plan to garner more government support.
Other initiatives to remove barriers for domestic abuse survivors are expected in the coming weeks.
One is centralized calling so people don’t have to phone individual shelters to find space.
Allen said the person manning the phone would use a Calgary-developed app called ShelterLink to determine whether a bed is available and if not, other supports would be offered.
“So we have them go to a hotel, and then the next day we would have somebody going in and actually meeting with her, figuring out what her needs are, working with the housing navigators, and really trying to help her to move into that next stage, whatever that might look like, or to support her until she can actually get into a shelter.”
Under immense pressure, Champagne said shelters are finding innovative ways to help people.
“To the point where, maybe they don’t have space but they’ve got a cot that’s available in their intake room where they can take somebody in and at least provide them with a meal, a shower, some clothes, some comfort and send them back out.”
‘There definitely needs to be some improvements’: survivor
Although Brown was able to secure some funding for a motel room after fleeing, she said she felt completely unsupported there.
She has since strengthened her relationship with her family and is now staying with them.
“I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it through all of this without the help of my family. They’ve been a great support. But a lot of women, and a lot of people going through this, they don’t have those supports.
“Women like that, they fall through the cracks.”