Dawn Bergman's death was the last straw for Shawn Bayes, executive director of the Elizabeth Fry Society of Greater Vancouver.
Bergman died outside after her encampment caught fire a few blocks from St. Paul's Hospital in December 2008 after refusing offers of help from police.
Bayes knew Bergman from EFry's women-only shelters in Greater Vancouver. She says Bergman chose not to sleep in co-ed shelters because she felt they were unsafe.
EFry is hosting a Symposium called Effective Shelter Design to Promote the Safety of Women and Families, Nov. 15. Experts will share ideas about every aspect of shelter design and operation. Bayes hopes good ideas based on experience will arise from the discussions. "Because everybody's afraid somebody's going to come in and threaten their operations or criticize them," she said.
Minimum specifications for the shelters would include bathrooms and showers with lockable doors. Bayes cites one case where a door separating the women's and men's sides of a bathroom was replaced with a sheet until B.C. Housing asked that the door be reinstated. She argues of the two staff people required at shelters of more than 10 beds, one should be a woman.
Full-service shelters should provide separate rooms for women so they don't have to sleep in rooms with men they don't know. Emergency shelters should have separate areas for women, situated closest to staff, so they can choose not to sleep head to toe with strange men.
Shelter operators have told Bayes they can't erect walls because of fire and building code issues. "I say, you know what, you manage cubicle space for offices- You put those movable wall[s] [in]. There are options that you can work within if you just will think about it," she said. "We always look at what the ideal solution is and say we can't afford that so we can't do anything. And I want to say there are things that we can do, and let's start moving there and doing those things."
About one quarter of reported homeless people are women, according to Bayes. That proportion doubles to 50 per cent for the aboriginal homeless population.
Lawyer Alison Brewin, retired executive director of Westcoast LEAF, or Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, will facilitate the symposium and write a report. It will be posted on EFry's website and shared with symposium participants.
The symposium runs from 9 a.m. to 4: 30 p.m. at the Morris J Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St. For more information, see elizabethfry.com.
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