An estimated 10,000 runaway and homeless youth spend time on the streets of Toronto every year, according to the Mayor’s Homelessness Action Task Force (1999). Covenant House takes in youths from ages 16 to 24, regardless of sex, race and circumstances, and it generally takes three to four months before they’re ready and able to stay off the streets. The shelter relies on donors for 80 per cent of its $17.7 million operating budget, and also receives funding from the City of Toronto.

Covenant House aims to provide an “emotionally and physically safe environment,” which includes a curfew, appropriate dress and language, and no drugs or weapons on the premises. As such, the shelter (which includes two buildings joined together) uses CCTV surveillance in the buildings and around the perimeter to ensure house rules are being followed.

But Covenant House was using old technology — an aging DVR-based analogue system that delivered poor video quality, had limited storage and had no ability for remote monitoring. “It wasn’t really working for us,” says Maydene Herman, facilities coordinator for Covenant House, who handles maintenance of the new system and user training. “We’ve had incidents where our setup wasn’t really conducive to retrieving data.”

She wanted to enable youth workers to call up information whenever they needed it, in a secure environment. But youth workers range in age and level of computer skills, so she was looking for technology that anyone could use with minimal training.

Paul Baziuk, senior account executive with Intercon Security, has been working with Covenant House for several years, and helped upgrade the system from two aging DVRs to an NVR solution.

“They couldn’t remotely view images from their office within the building, and they really wanted that because they are a 24-hour care facility for youths,” he says. The old DVR technology wouldn’t allow for that.
“In the past they couldn’t review it on their own machines, so they had to come to our head office to review these DAT tapes,” he says. “They’re like old Chevys ”“ they hold a lot of information but they’re extremely slow on extraction. It just did not make sense for them to come to our office.”