Responsive Shelter

Women, trans, and gender-diverse people experiencing gender-based violence often navigate multiple and intersecting challenges, including homelessness, drug use, and poverty. Many are also navigating the criminal legal, family policing (‘child protection’), immigration, and other government systems.

In response, shelters across Ontario are adapting their practices to reduce barriers, expand access, and better support shelter participants with complex and intersecting needs.

The HIV Legal Network’s Responsive Shelter project highlights practical, low-barrier approaches emerging across shelter settings. While this initiative builds on our work with Ontario’s Violence Against Women (VAW) sector, the practices featured here are relevant across emergency, drop-in, transitional, and supportive shelter models. The page is designed for shelter operators, advocates, service providers, and community partners seeking to expand access, reduce harm, and strengthen safety through trust-based approaches.

Maintaining Low-Barrier Admissions

Responsive shelters:

• Do not require sobriety as a condition of entry;
• Do not punish or stigmatize drug use;
• Prioritize support over exclusion or service restrictions; and
• Focus restrictions on behaviours that impact safety, instead of drug use itself.

Creating Flexible & Participant-Centred Expectations

Responsive shelters move away from a surveillance-based approach and toward collaboration by:

• Working with shelter participants to create shared expectations for communal living;
• Focusing shelter expectations on safety, independent of drug use;
• Using proportionate restrictions only when necessary to protect safety; and
• Hiring staff who share a harm reduction philosophy.

Fostering Safe & Trusting Environments

Responsive shelters recognize that safety is built through relationships. Practices include:

• Opportunities for learning between staff and participants, and among participants themselves;
• Hiring and valuing staff with lived and living experience;
• Prioritizing internal resolution before involving police or other government authorities;
• Training staff on police powers and limits, recognizing when police overstep; and
• Training staff on duty-to-report obligations, prioritizing parent and child support.

Embedding Harm Reduction & Health Supports

Responsive shelters treat harm reduction as core infrastructure, not an optional add-on. This can include:

• Access to sterile injection and inhalation supplies, biohazard containers for sharps disposal, safer-sex supplies, drug-checking strips, and naloxone kits;
• Regular safer-use education for shelter participants;
• Ongoing staff training on harm reduction and toxic drug response;
• Overdose prevention and response strategies;
• Peer support programs; and
• Partnerships and/or referrals to supplementary health and social services.

Recognizing Women’s Intersecting Identities

Responsive shelters recognize that people experience violence, drug use, and systems differently depending on their identities and experiences. Practices may include:

• Working with Indigenous communities to decolonize shelter practices;
• Working with racialized communities, including migrants, to address language and cultural barriers;
• Working with trans, non-binary, and gender-diverse communities to strengthen inclusive supports;
• Working with parenting individuals to better support both parents and children; and
• Recognizing how systems such as policing, family policing, immigration enforcement, poverty, racism, ableism, and colonialism shape people’s experiences of shelter and safety.

• Allows participants to possess drugs safely on site;
• Employs peer support workers and a dedicated Harm Reduction Coordinator;
• Provides on-site healthcare, including a Nurse Practitioner and physician; and
• Offers harm reduction and overdose prevention supplies and services along with monthly drug supply audits to determine toxicity of drug supplies.

• Operates a women-centred supervised consumption space;
• Integrates withdrawal management, healthcare, and harm reduction supports;
• Employs peer workers through community partnerships; and
• Provides low-barrier services for women and non-binary people.

• Supports women whether or not they leave an abusive partner;
• Individualized Harm Reduction Safety Plans;
• Child and Youth Intervention Advocate program; and
• Multilingual, accessible, and LGBTQ+ inclusive services.

• Supports women whether or not they leave an abusive partner;
• Individualized Harm Reduction Safety Plans;
• Child and Youth Intervention Advocate program; and
• Multilingual, accessible, and LGBTQ+ inclusive services.
• Offers specialized family court and legal supports.

• Does not require sobriety as a condition of shelter access;
• Employs staff with lived experience of drug use;
• Limits police and child protection involvement related to drug use; and
• Integrates harm reduction into shelter operations and programming.

• Harm reduction led by people with lived experience;
• Supports healthcare access regardless of immigration or insurance status;
• Multilingual peer support and wellness programming; and
• Participant-led advocacy and community leadership opportunities.