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Published: April 01, 2026 at 8:58PM EDT
https://www.ctvnews.ca/london/video/2026/04/01/ark-aid-to-slash-beds-hours-amid-1m-funding-shortfall
Ark Aid Street Mission is sounding the alarm a day after a federal homelessness program and city hall’s cold weather response ended.
Executive Director Sarah Campbell says the financial shortfall will exceed $1 million for the frontline agency, forcing several difficult but necessary service cuts for homeless Londoners.
It represents approximately one-third of their operational funding, and means essential services like meals, showers, clothing, washroom access, assessments, referrals, and system navigation will now rely entirely on donor support.
A total of 50 overnight spaces this winter (across three locations) will immediately cease.
The Ark had operated London’s only seven day-a-week open door emergency service outside regular business hours.
Services at 696 Dundas St. will be reduced from between 20 and 24 hours a day — to just four hours.
“We’re currently stepping everything down, starting with the night beds for winter. We will then reduce our daytime hours and by the end of the month, we’ll have just four hours each day,” Campbell explained.
Those remaining hours will be around dinner time.
“We have anywhere between 50 to 70 people through the doors at any one time, and on an average weekend we’re seeing 400 unique individuals come through our space because on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays there are no other open doors,” Campbell added.
Twelve referral organizations had been utilizing The Ark as a drop-off location for homeless individuals, including London police and local hospitals.
Campbell is disappointed that no other government funding was made available before the previous federal program expired March 31.
“If we have zero government dollars, how do we make sure that we show up for the people who need us, when they need us most?” she asked rhetorically.
Among the other services lost or significantly reduced:
“These are essential basic needs, but they’re also life saving activities,” Campbell explained. “We don’t allow any drug use on site, but we do have overdoses around our building regularly. In fact, we’ve responded to 29 overdoses just since January, so being present here is critical.”
Ark Aid Street Mission is issuing an urgent plea to donors and all levels of government.
“We would like the funding gap filled by the municipal government because that’s the [level of government] we can go to directly, but it’s not their responsibility alone,” Campbell told CTV News. “It was federal funding that had come to the municipality [that ended], so we’re advocating to all levels of government.”
Campbell worries that fewer services, resources and indoor spaces will lead to more suffering on the streets of London.
“I don’t think there’s a person in London who doesn’t know that this is a catastrophe,” she said.
The beds inside The Ark’s Cronyn Warner Shelter are not affected by the funding shortfall, but its funding is scheduled to expire in one year.
Editorial standards & policies
Estair Van Wagner said the letter of the law was followed in Mark Plank’s high-profile eviction case, but not the “human rights element.”
Michael John Lo
Apr 2, 2026 4:30 AM
Listen to this article | 00:04:54 Duration
The near-eviction of a 63-year-old Victoria renter due to missed rent-increase payments brings home the impact of treating housing “as a commodity instead of a home,” says a University of Victoria associate law professor.
Estair Van Wagner said the letter of the law was followed in Mark Plank’s high-profile eviction case, but not the “human rights element.”
“The process of eviction, whether or not it actually results ultimately in the loss of someone’s home, is really traumatizing,” she said in an interview. “We should be building a system where we avoid that at all costs.”
Plank was set to be evicted on Tuesday from his Cook Street Village apartment after he lost a Residential Tenancy Branch hearing that he did not attend.
The self-described computer illiterate had been sent a rental-increase notice, then an initial 10-day eviction notice, via email to an account he does not access without the help of others. His property manager started the eviction process the first month he failed to pay the $24 increase, though his rent payment at the original $828 rate was accepted.
Following advocacy from groups like Together Against Poverty Society and the Victoria Tenants Union, he was able to reach a last-minute agreement to stay in his home.
Van Wagner said many people in situations like Plank’s don’t have the knowledge or confidence to use existing legal protections to help their case. “People will leave at the first instance of being told that they’re evicted without exercising their rights,” she said.
Plank didn’t report the fact that his studio unit had leaky taps and a broken fridge out of fear of jeopardizing his housing, even though a landlord is required by law to fix those issues once they are made aware of them.
“We aren’t providing enough legal education and resources and advocacy to make sure that folks not only know their rights, but feel that they can exercise them,” Van Wagner said.
While the media can highlight cases of so-called “nightmare tenants,” there are more rental units that aren’t being kept to provincial standards than problem tenants, she said.
Ultimately, preventing evictions, particularly for seniors, those with disabilities and others who are vulnerable in society, is the best way to prevent the homelessness crisis in Victoria and elsewhere from getting worse, Van Wagner said.
“The infrastructure around dealing with homelessness is extraordinarily expensive, and it’s expensive both on a very practical level of emergency shelters and services … but also on the long-term health and mental-health impacts it has on folks,” she said.
Van Wagner said better funding of legal services like those offered by TAPS is a good first step.
TAPS lawyer Leila Geggie Hurst said demand for legal help with evictions is extraordinarily high in Victoria, noting her organization’s walk-in capacity for tenancy issues filled up within four minutes on Tuesday morning.
“There used to be a time in the distant past when if a tenant got an eviction notice, they were able to pretty quickly find housing and move elsewhere,” she said.
But now, tenants are more desperate and more willing to fight to stay in their housing because there are fewer affordable options, Geggie Hurst said, adding that the loss of housing often causes a “catastrophic spiral” in someone’s life.
Kaeley Wiseman, a professor at Vancouver Island University’s master of community planning program, said people often assume there’s a safety net for people who are living in aging, cheaper buildings and are displaced for various reasons.
“They assume that people like Mark [Plank] will then get picked up by the non-profit sector,” said Wiseman, who is also principal of Wiser Projects, a non-profit housing development consultancy.
But finding subsidized, non-market housing is getting more difficult “because this provincial budget has axed that safety net,” Wiseman.
Premier David Eby’s government retroactively clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars in the province’s Community Housing Fund in its latest budget, effectively stalling many affordable-housing projects across B.C., including on Vancouver Island, Wiseman said.
The funding crisis in the non-profit construction sector is likely to last for the next decade, and that’s not good when it takes eight to 10 years to build a publicly funded housing project in Canada, she said.
“You can imagine the competition for the units that we have built in the last 15 years … is going to be fierce.”
Wiseman said 15 per cent of housing available in Canada should be non-market, but the actual amount is only around three to four per cent.
“So by cutting all this stuff, Eby has undermined our entire province,” she said.
Housing First is an established concept in Finland since more than 15 years thanks to the Y-Foundation as a pioneer. The Y-Foundation was also one of the founding members of the Housing First Europe Hub.
In 2016 the Finish Y-Foundation together with FEANTSA established the Housing First Europe Hub. The Y-Foundation has been a key player in establishing Housing First as the main response to homelessness in Finland. Since 2007 national policies shifted towards reducing long-term homelessness through Housing First programmes.
As a result, in Finland, the utilisation of emergency and temporary accommodations, such as shelters, hostels, and temporary supported housing, has significantly declined. The number of homeless individuals residing in hostels or boarding houses decreased by 76% from 2008 to 2017. This reduction is attributed to the widespread adoption of prevention strategies, the replacement of outdated models of communal supported housing with Housing First and housing-led approaches, which largely replaced emergency shelters.
ARA, the Housing Finance and Development Centre, has also been involved in the implementation of Housing First in Finland since the start through subsidising new and renovated homes as well as giving housing advice to municipalities.
As a result, Finland is one of the only European countries that registers decreasing homelessness numbers. The country’s goal is to end homelessness in Finland all together.
Finland has managed to reduce homelessness in recent years, but homelessness as a phenomenon is still alive and well. The homelessness situation often escalates in the context of social and economic crises.
Originally Published on https://housingfirsteurope.eu/country/finland/
Poor people in Canada pay for funerals through provincial social assistance programs (like BC’s Ministry of Social Development or Ontario Works), the federal Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Death Benefit.
Many today are choosing simpler, lower-cost options like direct cremation, with funeral homes often guiding families through these limited financial resources. Government aid covers basic services, but often falls short of average funeral costs, requiring families to supplement or choose minimal arrangements.
Work with Funeral Homes: Funeral directors are familiar with these programs and guide families to choose services within the available budget.
Ministry Pays the Funeral Home: If approved, the ministry pays the funeral home directly for approved services, which may cover cremation or burial and other basic costs.
Peace to All and Best Wishes to All in the New Year of Life and it’s passing encounters.
theurbansurvivor.org
Jane Kirby | Originally Published on The United Kingdom’s “Independent” Newspaper 2025
Saturday 06 December 2025 00:01 GMT
A groundbreaking trial for a prostate cancer treatment with fewer side effects has launched in the UK.
Backed by the Government-funded National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the trial will examine whether Aquablation – a therapy using robotics, AI and real-time imaging – works as well or better than traditional surgery, known as radical prostatectomy.
Radical prostatectomy involves removing the entire prostate gland in a bid to cure men of prostate cancer. The treatment is suitable for men whose cancer has not spread outside of the prostate gland or has spread to the area just outside the gland.
However, the operation carries a risk of serious side-effects, such as infection, erectile dysfunction and urinary problems.
Researchers hope Aquablation will minimise these issues.
The therapy is currently used in some centres to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).
Aquablation involves a robotic-assisted, high-pressure waterjet. Surgeons can also map the entire prostate in real time with ultrasound.
Using the technique, medics find cancerous tissue to remove while avoiding surrounding nerves and muscles associated with erectile function and the bladder.
The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in London is the first hospital in Europe to recruit a patient to the trial, which is being run in seven countries.
Overall, 280 patients will be recruited globally, all with early-stage, localised prostate cancer who have already decided to have surgery.
Philip Charlesworth, consultant urological surgeon at the Royal Marsden, said: “For men with prostate cancer confined to the prostate, curative options are excellent, however, we are becoming increasingly focused on the side-effects of the cancer treatment and how we can embrace new technology to maintain a man’s quality-of-life following their surgery.
“This trial is measuring Aquablation therapy, which uses a robotic approach to surgically remove the cancer, and to preserve a man’s ability to remain continent and maintain sexual activity.
“The potential for this trial is very exciting. It has an opportunity, depending on the results of the study, to add an alternative surgical treatment option for patients with localised prostate cancer across the globe.
“The ultimate aim, and my passion, is to improve prostate cancer treatments so that they cause less harm and are less invasive for the patient.
“I feel that this is an incredibly exciting prospect for the future of prostate cancer care.”
Other potential treatments for localised prostate cancer include active surveillance or monitoring of the cancer and radiation.
The new trial is sponsored by the US company, Procept BioRobotics.
To date, there are more than 25 centres globally recruiting patients for the trial.
The four UK centres are the Royal Marsden, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The trial comes after Health Secretary Wes Streeting said earlier this week he was “surprised” by the decision from scientific advisers to limit prostate cancer screening.
In a draft recommendation, the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC), which advises the Government, said prostate cancer screening should not be made routinely available for the vast majority of men in the UK.
It said it would not recommend population screening using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test because it “is likely to cause more harm than good”.
Experts are expecting data within two years from a large trial launched by Prostate Cancer UK into whether combining PSA with other tests, such as rapid MRI scans, could lead to a recommendation for population-wide screening.
For now, the committee will put forward only a recommendation to screen men with BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations – which puts them at far higher risk of prostate cancer – every two years, between the ages of 45 and 61.
Prostate cancer usually starts to grow on the outer part of the prostate. If this happens, it can cause changes to the way you pee, such as:
Other symptoms can include:
Speaking on Wednesday on BBC Breakfast, Mr Streeting said he was surprised by the decision.
He said: “I’m looking very carefully at why the national screening committee reached that decision.
“I’ve always said these things have got to be based on science and evidence, not on politics.
“But the recommendation did surprise me.
“This is contested. I’ve got people in the prostate cancer community and not just really prominent patients and celebrities and politicians who’ve used their experience and their voice in this debate, but among scientists and researchers.
“This is a draft recommendation. They consult on this for three months, and then we have to make a final decision.
“What I’m going to do is get some of those leading, best scientific voices and competing opinions around the table to thrash this out, to really interrogate the data and make sure that when I come on your programme having made a decision, it’s the right decision for the right reasons, the best evidence and the public can then understand why we’ve made the decision and the scientific community can understand why we’ve made the decision.
“But I am interrogating this data and recommendation because it did surprise me.”
Many experts argue that the PSA test is not very reliable because men with a high PSA level may not have cancer, and some men with cancer have a normal PSA result.
A positive test result may lead to unnecessary treatment for slow-growing or harmless tumours, leaving men at risk of side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction.
But others argue that current evidence supports wider testing.
The Homeless Prevention Program provides portable rent supplements and support services to individuals in identified at-risk groups facing homelessness.
The Homeless Prevention Program is an initiative aimed at providing individuals in identified at-risk groups facing homelessness with portable rent supplements and support services to help them access rental housing in the private (non-subsidized) housing market.
The rent supplements and support services help recipients access rental housing in the private (non-subsidized) housing market and community-based services.
The Homeless Prevention Program operates, in many instances, as an enhancement to the existing Homeless Outreach Program / Indigenous Homeless Outreach Programs and targets individuals at transition points that put them at greater risk of homelessness.
Cost: None. Services are free.
To be eligible, you (or someone you know) are at immediate risk of homelessness. This includes:
If you are eligible and approved, the rent supplement can assist with:
You cannot use the rent supplement for:
Please contact an outreach worker for full details. An outreach worker will be able to determine what you are eligible for.
Contact a Homeless Prevention Program Service Provider or go to the nearest Emergency Shelter and ask to speak to staff.
Outreach staff will ask a few questions about your situation and income to determine your eligibility.
Note: Rental supplements are intended to be temporary.
Originally published on the British Columbia Housing Program website.
Written by: Vikki Hopes
Feb 25, 2025 10:22 AM
Listen to this article by accessing the above player.
A 30-bed emergency shelter for older adults is being planned at Central Heights Church in Abbotsford.
The plan came before city council on Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 25), when a temporary-use permit and housing agreement were approved.
A staff report to council states that 30 individual “sleeping units” will be provided in an existing building on the church property at 1661 McCallum Rd.
That area at the north end of the building has been operating by Sparrow Community Services Society as a severe weather shelter for older adults.
A letter to the city from BC Housing in September 2024 states that in order to accommodate the emergency shelter, the building will be renovated to include sufficient washroom and shower facilities, accessible entry and operator spaces.
The space is expected to be completed this winter.
The Central Heights Church Shelter will continue to be run by Sparrow – which serves older adults (50+) who are at risk of homelessness – under an agreement with BC Housing.
Support services will be provided 24/7 under the Homelessness Encampment Action Response Temporary Housing (HEARTH) and Homelessness Encampment Action Response Team (HEART) programs.
The staff report to council says a temporary-use permit was required to accommodate the proposed use as it abuts an existing residential use.
The permit will be valid for three years, with the opportunity to request one three-year extension.
The housing agreement includes that the operators must form a good neighbour committee with monthly meetings for the first four months and then on an as-needed basis.
The operators must also provide support services – directly or through referrals – such as life-skills training, counselling and substance-use services.
They must also at least have two staff on site 24/7, and ensure that guests “do not disturb the peace, quiet and enjoyment of the neighbourhood.”
The project has drawn support from Fraser Health and the Abbotsford Police Department, which states that the current services offered at the site have required fewer police resources than comparable facilities.
The city says there are currently 40 encampments and more than 400 unhoused individuals across Abbotsford.
Originally published online at The Abbotsford News
Tom Kershaw & Paige Oldfield
Sun 16 February 2025 at 11:37 am GMT-8·1-min read
They may be small and swift, but if you notice this tiny silver creature scurrying around your home, you could be facing a significant and costly issue. Experts are advising anyone who spots a silverfish in their property to promptly check for dampness.
These shiny, teardrop-shaped insects thrive in moist conditions and are particularly fond of areas with water.
If you see one darting into or out of your skirting boards or crevices around window sills, it’s likely a sign of damp and moisture within your property. If not addressed, dampness can lead to a host of problems, including cracked bricks, rotting joists, decaying plaster, and spreading mould spores. In extreme cases, it can even compromise the structural integrity of the property and impact air quality.
Dampness can result from various factors, such as leaky drainpipes, condensation, ageing damp proofing, or inadequate ventilation, especially in bathrooms or kitchens where water vapour tends to linger. Identifying the cause can be tricky, but the presence of silverfish indoors usually signals that there’s dampness requiring attention.
The sooner signs of dampness are detected, the easier it will be to eradicate the bugs. It recommends looking for indications on walls like wet or damp patches, peeling wallpaper, and flaking plaster.
Other telltale signs include damp and musty smells, rotting wood, and the emergence of mould and mildew on walls, floors, or ceilings.
Among the proposed remedies are utilising a dehumidifier, maintaining good ventilation in your home, inspecting your gutters for leaks, applying damp-proof paint to your walls and, if necessary, engaging a professional to address areas impacted by rising dampness.
Originally published on Yahoo! United Kingdom
