A place to call home

INSIDE THE MAPLE HOUSING PROGRAM

Everyone deserves to have a home and the opportunity to rebuild their lives, no matter who they are or where they come from. This is a belief exemplified by The Maple, our supportive housing program for female-identifying adults who have experienced chronic homelessness. The Maple is one of our newer programs and each day it is dedicated to helping residents improve their quality of life and define what success looks like for them.

Take an inside look at The Maple and the people who live there, as told by program manager Crystal Scott and case manager Lexi Knight.

How would you describe the overall purpose of The Maple?

Crystal: The Maple means something different for every single one of the residents. For some when they first come in, it’s the opportunity to have a safe place that they can call home. For others, it’s a steppingstone to what’s next.

It’s safety and security. We want to provide the ability which everyone should have: to feel safe and to trust others around you. We want them to come in and not just survive, but also have the right and privilege to succeed, and success looks different for everybody.

Lexi: Everyone here is over the age of 25, so it’s very different than working with youth. It’s a lot more coaching and support through their day-to-day lives and helping them learn how to do things for themselves. It’s about empowering the residents to do what they can and then being there to support them through it.

Who are the people who work at The Maple?

Crystal: We have ten client support staff who are on site 24/7. They focus on the basic day-to-day life skills. That can look like cooking, banking, setting up doctor’s appointments, accessing community resource, etc.

We also have two harm reduction therapists that come to The

Maple a couple of times a week. This gives the residents the opportunity to engage with a therapist without having to leave the building. Our Circle Keeper, Ezra McKay, also comes to The Maple to do cultural pieces that the residents request, like smudge and ceremony.

At The Maple, whatever the residents need, there’s somebody there that can help, which is very important for some of the residents that have been street entrenched and haven’t had those needs taken care of in the past.

How does The Maple provide a safe environment for residents?

Lexi: We create a sense of safety where residents know that they have a home to come to every night, a bed to sleep in and a safe space to be. Harm reduction is a big component. It’s so much more than just handing out safe-use supplies. We’re supporting them to live life fully and reach their potential.

Crystal: Many of the residents that come to us have a very long history of trauma, and a lot of times that trauma comes from domestic violence. We create a safe environment where they can still have guests come into our building, but there are certain boundaries that we can put in place. For example, one of the residents who had a guest over came to a staff and said, “I really need this guest to leave because I don’t feel safe.”

So, it creates a safety net where they can ask for support and help if they don’t have the skills yet to put those boundaries in place themselves.

How do you work on relationshipbuilding with residents?

Lexi: A fair number of our residents don’t know what it’s like to have healthy relationships because they haven’t experienced them in their life. Staff will model how to have an adult conversation, how to navigate tricky relationships, how to set and maintain boundaries.

One of The Maple’s strengths is client engagement. We have a monthly calendar where we have different activities like midnight movie nights, baking days, and crafts. Sometimes we’ll sit in the kitchen and help them do their hair or nails. A lot the residents really like art, so we’ll sit in the kitchen and paint together. That’s a really great way to genuinely get to know people and learn what supports they need.

Crystal: Thanks to a grant from the Calgary Homeless Foundation, we were able to hire a recreation planner to plan daily activities for the residents. It could be anything from trips to Banff, scootering around the city, bowling or going to the zoo together. Opportunities that our residents have never experienced.

Health and belonging is a critical piece. We can give somebody a home but if they don’t feel like they belong there, then it really makes no difference. They’re not going to stay. They’re going to go back out into the streets. We want to create those relationships and the ability to go do new things so that the residents also feel like they belong in the community.

What does resident success look like?

Lexi: Things that might seem simple to you or I are not always simple for a lot of residents who’ve had to live in constant survival mode. My goal is to do whatever I can to make their lives a little easier. That might look like getting a resident to wash their hands if they have trouble with hygiene, helping them to go grocery shopping, or even making them laugh if they’re having a rough day.

What are some milestones you celebrated this past year?

Lexi: We had a resident who was homeless for ten years before she came to The Maple. She and I built this amazing relationship. She would poke fun at me, and I could kind of poke fun at her back, and she would just laugh. At one of her last lease signings, she said, “This is my home. This is my first real home. I have these people who I know care about me.” That was huge.

Crystal: Often when people come off the streets and they’re in active addiction, they’re in fight mode because that’s how they survived. You can see the switch when they know that they have somewhere safe, they have somewhere consistent and they have staff there 24/7 who genuinely care about them.

For one resident who has severe schizophrenia, staff used to have to call emergency services two to three times a day. It’s now been over a year since we’ve made any calls. She’s able to manage how she’s feeling and it’s because she feels safe and has built trust with staff. She never had conversations in the past, and now she can articulate herself and express how she’s feeling.

Residents and staff play a fun game of bingo together. Engaging with residents through activities and spending time together helps residents to build healthy relationships and feel supported.

When you can trust others and have healthy relationships, everything else can start to fall into place. If we can help break down barriers, that provides these residents with the opportunity to start building healthy relationships with other people, whether it be street friends or their families.

How long do residents stay with The Maple?

Crystal: It’s really based on their individual needs. There’s no timeline. There’s always hope for transition, but that doesn’t mean there has to be transition. Some residents have gotten to a place where they’re ready to move into a community placement, but a lot of our residents will tell you they’ll probably be with us forever. We are happy to have them with us for as long as they need.