Nisa Homes provides a safe haven for Muslim women in need

Every day, the small house in Mississauga opens its doors and its heart to women in need. And for up to three months a year, 14 women and children from across the GTA, make it their home.

Nisa Homes is the GTA’s first transitional shelter specifically geared to serving Muslim women. The Mississauga location of Nisa — which means women in Arabic — opened its doors three years ago. There is also a location in Surrey, B.C., and plans are underway to launch one in Windsor by the end of the year.

The home is open to any woman in need, but most of the clientele identify as Muslim. Many are recent immigrants, or refugees. Some are homeless, others are trying to leave behind abusive homes and start afresh.

“For a lot of the women here, they are not looking for a shelter in a traditional sense,” said Yasmine Youssef, program manager for Nisa Homes. Many have recently left their partners, have been staying with friends or family members and are trying to figure out what to do.

“They are now looking for a place where they can get their lives in order,” Youssef said.

The project was started by an organization called the National Zakat Foundation, created to help Muslims in Canada distribute charity and alms — a requirement of the faith — to the needy across Canada.

Zubair Qasim, executive director with NZF, said Nisa Homes was born out of conversations with community members about the fact Muslim women were underserved when it came to safe housing or shelter.

Qasim said a quick needs assessment in 2012 found that while many mainstream shelters serve a diverse population, there were few centres that had the resources to address the specific cultural and religious needs of Muslim women, including the notion of stigma.

“Data on current shelters in the Greater Toronto Area reveal a limited amount of resources geared towards assisting Muslim women. Of the total of 21 shelters analyzed, one Muslim shelter was identified in the East Toronto area to have suitable arrangements for religious accommodations,” researchers wrote in a feasibility report on the need for a Muslim shelter. “Other shelters lack adequate immigration resources, prayer facilities … and sometimes even language interpretation.”

Among the shelters they looked at were Anduhyaun, which serves Indigenous women and children, Jewish Family and Child, and the Muslim Welfare Home for Needy Women and Children in Durham, which serves a broader population and is the only emergency women’s shelter in the municipality.

Youssef says Nisa Homes is not an emergency shelter — but serves as a place for women to figure out how to transition to safety.

According to a Statistics Canada snapshot from 2014, of the nearly 8,000 women and children who accessed shelter facilities across the country, half went to transition homes, with 78 per cent fleeing abuse.

“Most of the women here don’t have the immediate needs,” said Youssef. “A lot of them are looking for more long-term options.”

They are also looking for resources like mental health support, immigration advice, and legal and housing support, she said. “We try to help them put these pieces into place.” And they continue to follow-up for three months after the women move out.

Many turn to Nisa Homes in hopes of finding cultural and religious sensitive supports.

“A lot of women are not reaching out for assistance because they are worried about experiencing drugs, alcohol … to the point that some women stay in abusive situations for years because they would rather stay than access shelters,” said Youssef. She said she has heard stories of women who had gone to other shelters having difficulty getting food during Ramadan, facing Islamophobic comments, or in one case, a woman who talked about her hijab getting pulled off her head, and in another, a woman who was horrified when an abusive client urinated on her prayer mat.

“Lots of situations where there is no understanding, it makes many women feel like, here I am leaving everything I know, and now I am being marginalized even further,” she said. “And studies show that using community and cultural supports are the best way to help women overcome trauma.”

Maryam, who stayed at Nisa Homes in 2015 after fleeing an abusive marriage, says she experienced a familiarity at the shelter she did not expect.

“I was reluctant to go to a shelter, and scared to be homeless,” said Maryam, who asked that her real name not be used. “But I was in distress. I didn’t have family here, or much of a social circle. But when I arrived at the house, I felt immediately at ease.”

She said staff at the home checked in with her to make sure she was sleeping and eating, and gave her spiritual guidance when she needed it. Over the three months she was there, she wrote her final university exams, and completed her master’s degree.

Two years later, she’s now living in Montreal, managed to secure an internship with the UN, and has a successful career. She says she can’t imagine where she would have ended up without Nisa Homes.

“I can’t even express what Nisa Homes did for me. They helped me look forward, instead of looking back,” she said.

Since 2014, the organization has helped more than 150 women across the country, said Youssef. But for every woman they help, there are “400 calls that we have gotten so far that we can’t help … mainly because we are full on any given day.” And on any given day, there is a waitlist of at least five families trying to get in.

The current home in Mississauga is a rental with six rooms. Some women have roommates. Others come with their families and take up half of the house. There are other limitations: The homes aren’t accessibility friendly. The organization doesn’t yet have resources to support those with severe mental illness, or those who are fleeing dangerous situations.

Youssef says telling women there is no space for them is as hard as hearing their stories. She recalls one recent phone call from an elderly woman, who said she was kicked out of her home by her adult children because she had severe depression and anxiety and had nowhere to go.

But for every disappointment, there are happy stories too.

During the recent influx of refugees from the U.S., the Surrey location was called upon by local agencies to take in families coming across the border. One day, the centre got a call to take in a family of nine — including eight kids.

“They were the sweetest kids, they wouldn’t even have lunch unless I sat with them,” said Youssef.

Months later when she checked in with the family, she was happy to hear they are thriving. “The kids are all in school,” she said. “The eldest son has a job now. That family is doing so well now.”