County updates Housing and Homelessness Plan with focus on more affordable housing, community acceptance

By Mike Renzella

The Halidmand Press

HALDIMAND—Homelessness and housing services are at the core of a new review released by Haldimand Norfolk Social Services (HNSS). The review is an update to the 10 Year Housing and Homelessness Plan, which seeks to create new ways to cast a wider safety net for the vulnerable populations of Haldimand and Norfolk counties.

Although concrete statistics are hard to compile, Heidy VanDyk, Director of HNSS, provided us with a snapshot of the methods used to measure homelessness in the region.

“We have 21 rooms in the Emergency Housing program and the average occupancy rate for the month of November was 12 rooms per night. As the weather gets colder and people who are living ‘rough’ (either on the street or camping) decide to come indoors, we expect that our occupancy rates in emergency housing will increase as they usually do this time of year,” said VanDyk.