Several local families are going into the winter with no place to live
Leading up to the holiday season, the urgent need in Peterborough remains as present as ever. The severe shortage of affordable and adequate housing for youth and families who are struggling in Peterborough is having a devastating impact on our community. Alarmingly, there are currently several families (parents and grandparents with guardianship of one or more children) in our community without a stable home.
Everyone deserves a place of their own to keep cozy and safe in the winter time. Please consider a donation to YES today as we try to support the youth and families in Peterborough who are spending this holiday season with nowhere to live.
New and disturbing trends
YES Family Worker, Virginia, is seeing more and more parents struggling to find a place to live that works for them. Virginia is the only worker in Peterborough who supports families facing homelessness to find and keep housing that works for them. She is currently helping over 20 families in town, either in shelter, in transitional housing or at-risk of homelessness in the community.
Because of the lack of affordable and adequate housing in Peterborough for families, Virginia is seeing more parents with jobs unable to find housing and ending up in a housing crisis.
Virginia says that for families, YES Food Cupboard support has been huge. Without it, parents are having to choose between paying rent or buying food. That means our Food Cupboard Program is helping to keep people housed.
Like many of our most committed staff at YES, Virginia brings a unique understanding to her role, having experienced family homelessness herself when her kids were smaller. “I get it. I’ve walked your shoes,” she says when meeting with a family. Virginia’s perspective has helped her give families hope and effectively navigate the rental housing market in Peterborough.
How we are supporting families to find and keep adequate housing
A donation from you today will help Virginia continue this work. Because of rising costs, we’ve had to scale back our food program significantly in 2024. The only reason it continues at all is because of our generous community. A donation from you today will help us connect parents with food support so they can keep their housing and stay together as a family.
Virginia works will families to connect help them find and keep housing that works well for them. She connects parents with rental opportunities and can reduce the barriers to entering a rental agreement. She can connect them with food boxes when housed and help address the supports they might need to stabilize their housing situation.
A local bid-euchre group this past fall got together to provide school supplies, new shoes, and backpacks to kids in shelter so they had what they needed for school. Virginia said that it was so fun handing out the new items, and it made ‘back to school’ time much more fun for the families involved.
With help from you, we can continue to support families experiencing homelessness and ensure they have what they need, including daily school lunches prepared by our emergency shelter staff. You can help youth and children succeed and feel valued, even in difficult circumstances.
Everyone deserves to feel warm and safe this holiday season. Please support YES to provide this safety in shelter to parents with children currently in a housing crisis.
Please note: depictions of children and families accessing housing and homelessness services have been changed in order to protect client privacy.