Mary Vaccaro is a faculty member in the school of social work at McMaster University in Hamilton. She’s also been working in the women’s shelter system since 2012. She spoke with People First Radio about her observations from those years of work.
“ I think we need to know that many of the women that we see on the streets in our cities are there because of violence. And many of the women I spoke to, shared with me stories about leaving their homes, leaving their families of origin because of the gender-based violence they were experiencing in those homes, and then as you learn more about their lives, only to learn that that cycle and pattern continued to repeat itself throughout their relationships and throughout their life,” Vaccaro said.
“Women leave situations of violence, enter into homelessness, but are also more at risk of violence because they’re living unhoused in our communities. And so I think oftentimes, at least in the women’s sector, we sort of divide services between folks who are experiencing violence and accessing violence against women’s shelters, and another group of women who are experiencing homelessness and accessing sort of traditional homeless shelters, and I think that really needs to be broken down and, those silos need to sort of stop.”
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