Partnership has taken pressure off emergency shelter system, agencies say.
July 14, 2025 | 3 min read
Teviah Moro/The Hamilton Spectator
A home and a job form the foundation of Sarah Ojezele’s new life in Hamilton after she fled an abusive marriage in Nigeria.
“I’ve got my confidence back,” the mother of four says about her fresh start. “I just keep pushing through.”
That mindset is a sharp turnaround from the suicidal ideations that plagued her back home while grappling with a daily cycle of violence and control.
But instead of “jumping into the river,” Ojezele mustered the courage last year to take a chance on Canada, where her eldest son was studying.
And in Hamilton, the 40-year-old asylum seeker started over through the co-ordinated support of local social-service agencies that have teamed up to help newcomers like her.
“When I came here, I was received wholeheartedly,” Ojezele says in a boardroom at Wesley, where she lived in transitional housing for three months before lining up an apartment in the central lower city.
Teviah Moro/The Hamilton Spectator
Wesley’s transitional housing initiative has 75 spaces for asylum-seeking men, women, couples and families.
Good Shepherd’s 10 transitional spaces for women and Refuge Newcomer Health’s co-ordination of services and referrals round out the city-backed collaborative effort.
The agencies say the partnership has filled a crucial gap for newcomers and taken pressure off Hamilton’s swamped emergency shelter system amid a homelessness crisis since its launch last year.
The program follows an influx of asylum seekers in Toronto, mostly from Kenya and Uganda in the summer of 2023. Many of them wound up in other cities, including Hamilton, occupying as much as 36 per cent of shelter beds at one point.
The numbers in local shelters have since dropped, and the new partnership is playing a considerable role, says Michelle Baird, the city’s director of housing services.
“It’s helpful for the people involved as well as the system overall, so I think lots of good news on that front.”
City council is to consider roughly $5.3 million in 2026 and 2027 budget deliberations to extend the program’s services to March 31, 2027, with the goal of receiving funding from the federal government to cover costs.
Each of the agency partners plays a unique role in the collaborative effort, says Terri Bedminster, executive director of Refuge Newcomer Health. “We’re each bringing our own skill-sets, our own expertise to the table.”
Refuge “navigators” assess new arrivals at shelters and quickly connect them with transitional housing through Wesley and Good Shepherd, as well as other settlement services.
“That’s co-ordination. It takes collaboration. It takes an understanding,” Bedminster said.
Legal support, help opening a bank account, getting children into school, and tapping into government services are the puzzle pieces of a new life in Canada, Wesley CEO Rashed Afif says.
“The other thing that starts the first day they arrive here is their housing journey.”
Of the 250 people Wesley has supported so far, 170 have moved into permanent housing, noted Afif at Wesley’s Main Street East centre, where the average stay has been about two months.
Some have found housing, mostly in private rentals through Wesley’s connections with landlords, as soon as 22 days, he points out.
“In this market, with what’s happening, I think this is a great success.”
Meanwhile, the program has helped 12 people find work in various fields, including factory, warehouse, banking, janitorial and health positions, Afif noted.
Part of Ojezele’s new start was studying to become a personal support worker, a job that now makes for full days traversing Hamilton by bus to care for clients in their homes.
“I love them,” she says. “I don’t see them as my clients. I see them as my mom.”
In Nigeria, Ojezele recalls, she had to sneak out to visit her mother, who had mobility issues, to avoid her controlling ex’s physical and emotional abuse.
“There was nothing to live for,” she says, fighting back tears. “What kept me going back home was my kids.”
Ojezele lives with her two younger daughters, 11 and 16, in a basement apartment in a lower-city home. Her two older sons, 20 and 18, live on their own.
Between her work and children, she has also found the time to volunteer in the community.
And now that Ojezele is in the health sector, she has set her eyes on becoming a nurse. “I want to take care of people. I love people.”
Of the 41 single women that Good Shepherd’s Bakhita House has supported since it opened in east Hamilton, 31 have transitioned to permanent housing.
So far, they’ve stayed an average of 81 days, which is shorter than typical stays in shelter, director Grace Baldwin noted.
In addition to the program’s services, women at Bakhita House find support in each other, Baldwin said.
Some have moved out together, sharing the cost of housing in an escalated market, she noted.
“So that’s opened up a lot of other doors for them that maybe otherwise wouldn’t have been there.”
Bakhita House’s success has taken pressure off women’s shelters, which are routinely overcapacity, Baldwin said.
Mission Services has also seen “a shift” since the transitional housing partnership launched, says Tiffany May, director of men’s emergency services. “It’s helped a lot.”
The shelter operator makes its own efforts to help newcomers find housing, but at least 24 have been transferred to the transitional program since November 2024.
“They’re filling an essential gap,” May said.
Teviah Moro’s reporting on housing and homelessness is funded by Hamilton Community Foundation, which supports reliable journalism to advance public awareness. HCF does not assign, edit, vet or endorse editorial content. Reach him at tmoro@thespec.com.
