The homeless camp along the Okanagan Rail Trail.

(CARLI BERRY / iNFOnews.ca)

Unhoused women deal with a number of specific and often silent issues and needs while living on the street that are often overlooked, like menstruation and accessing proper resources can be difficult.

Women rely on pads, tampons or menstrual cups but they can be expensive and alternatives are not necessarily safe.

“Resources that are specific to women such as sanitary products and contraceptive products are harder to access than those resources that are in demand by all such as food, clothes, and water,” says Micki Materi from Archway Society. “Those items (the sanitary products) have been affected by inflation rates and they have become very expensive and so are very hard to get for homeless women.”

Homeless women often rely on organizations to hand them out. In the Okanagan, HOPE outreach has volunteers that distribute sanitary products daily in Kelowna and Vernon.

“Our volunteers are the ones facilitating those hygienic needs, and on a nightly basis, handing out those products. We also do a lot of outreach in, for example, Rutland where we go out once a week and try to help those women out there where there’s not as much support as there is in, let’s say, downtown Kelowna,” says Dominique Lennox from HOPE outreach.

HOPE outreach receives donations of sanitary products or money to buy them, but these resources remain difficult to access.

“There’s a lack of resources in terms of getting pads or tampons and things like that. We got a huge donation of menstrual cups from Diva cups but even then, for unhoused women, it is uncomfortable in terms of... doing it with a menstrual cup, so getting proper resources is a big issue,” says Lennox, specifying that menstrual cups should be washed in boiling water after 12 hours of use.

When the proper resources are not available, homeless women are forced to find alternatives, but even those aren’t always effective.

“Toilet paper is used, if they’re able to use a washroom facility at an establishment, gathering toilet paper and utilizing it that way is an alternative, but that can cause health issues such as bacterial vaginosis or yeast infections and things like that,” says Lennox. “When women don’t have the appropriate sanitary products, the leaks become an issue because it shows through your clothing, it’s definitely not sanitary, and there’s not many places for them to do their laundry and they already don’t have that many clothes so that becomes an issue as well.”

When women face the consequences of this lack of resources, they can suffer from health concerns which aren’t always easy to recognize.

“When it comes to menstrual or reproductive-related health issues because we build relationships with the girls some feel comfortable coming to us to talk about the issues, but we don’t come from a medical perspective. That said, we can help support them through these issues when those become problematic and point them in the right direction,” states Lennox.

This is where walk-in clinics or programs like Urban Outreach through Interior Health come in handy, but Lennox mentions that it is important to raise awareness and educate these women who, like any other women, cannot always recognize these health issues. Further, these other programs aren’t always helpful.

“There are lots of barriers for women to access services through walk-in clinics, especially for those services,” says Lennox.

HOPE outreach is the main source of sanitary products for unhoused women in the Okanagan, but even then, their hard work is not always sufficient.

“There’s always going to be a lack of resources when it comes to sanitary products,” states Lennox. “The problems that come with this will also continue as long as we don’t have enough resources.”

HOPE outreach is based in Kelowna, operates in Vernon, and offers resources for women experiencing different types of homelessness, addiction, violence, or who are exploited or at risk of being so and those working in sex work.

Archway Society is based in Vernon and offers resources to women and their children who survive situations of domestic and sexual violence.

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