Housing crisis leaves Calgary elder abuse shelter clients scrambling

With an influx of provincial funding, the Kerby Centre recently added six more beds to the city's only elder abuse shelter — but the team still has to turn away seniors experiencing abuse because clients are struggling to find a safe, affordable place to live and move forward.

A shortage of subsidized housing in Calgary, paired with skyrocketing rents for market units, means clients in the shelter are sometimes staying double the length of time that the shelter is set up for.

Larry Mathieson, CEO of Unison at Kerby Centre, says the shelter is geared to be a 30 to 90 day placement. That isn't the case today, and Mathieson says the housing crisis is a major factor.

"We actually just had a woman who is our longest stay at the shelter, and she was with us just a little over a year," said Mathieson, who noted she was a new Canadian and faced extra barriers, but found housing last week.

He says demand for subsidized seniors' housing is so high that it can take four to six weeks just for partner housing organizations to review applications.

Abuse survivors can then face another six to nine month waiting list, he says.

That wait can be even longer for the shelter's younger clients.

"Most of the organizations that we work with would say, 'Well, if somebody is under 65, you can by default add at least five years onto that list because we have such a backlog of people who are 65 and over,'" said Mathieson.

"It's just there's such a lack right now of housing, it creates a lack of movement in the system."

The shelter's new beds should help reduce the amount of people they have to turn away, says Mathieson, but demand for the shelter is also rising.

He attributes that to Calgary's aging population, as well as affordability and housing struggles among the wider population. 

"The increase in inflation, the increase in the cost of housing — all of those things create additional economic and social stress. So I think we see more cases of any type of abuse."

Cassandra, whose real name CBC News is not using to protect her identity from her abusers, wound up at the Kerby Centre's elder abuse shelter about three months ago.

The 67-year-old was recovering from a major surgery at a rehabilitation care home when she realized that she was being emotionally and financially abused by the people she was previously living with — people whom she believed were her friends.