FirstConnect

About Argus

At Argus, we offer 24/7 homelesness prevention and shelter diversion services to youth in crisis anywhere within the Waterloo Region. In addition to our food, shelter and constant staff support, we also offer a voluntary life-skills acquisition program whose main goal is to mobilize young people experiencing homelessness towards a healthy and viable re-integration into their community.

24/7 Support Line

Administrative Contact

(519) 650-0452

1 (877) 818-0388

FirstConnect - Exploring Housing Options and Community Connections

What Do We Do?

FirstConnect is the first point of contact into the emergency shelter system of Waterloo Region. Our FirstConnect team will start a conversation with you to explore safe alternatives to shelter by problem solving barriers and challenges that you have with your current housing, connecting or reconnecting you to loved ones or navigating you to community organizations that can support you further.

Our goal is to support you with identifying options that meet your needs and support you in the short and long term. We do this through homeless prevention and shelter diversion work.

Homeless prevention happens before you become homeless. This could look like calling our FirstConnect team after having an argument with a loved one, the relationship breaking down and now you can’t stay in the home or receiving a letter from your landlord asking you to leave. The main goal of homeless prevention is to keep you in that housing, as long as it’s safe, until you can find a better housing option. This could look like connecting with your landlord to work out a longer stay, speaking through concerns with a loved one so that you can keep living in that housing or referring you to our local housing resource centre for rent bank support.

Shelter diversion happens when you have already left your housing and before you access shelter. The goal is to identify a safe alternative to shelter. This could look like calling our FirstConnect team after you have already left your housing and have been sleeping on a friend’s couch but can no longer stay there. Our team will work with you to identify other housing options. This could be providing transportation to stay with family or a friend who can safely house you or using our flex funds to support you with staying at a friend’s house for a short time while you figure out your next steps.

Who Do We Support?

FirstConnect supports anyone who is 18 and over in Waterloo Region and who is at-risk of homelessness or is experiencing homelessness.

If you are looking for support because you are dealing with housing insecurity, there has been a relationship breakdown and you can no longer stay in your housing, you were given a letter or eviction notice from your landlord, you were asked to leave your family home, or you have been sleeping outside, you can give us a call anytime for support.

We work closely with our shelter partners to ensure that, if you need emergency shelter, you can get a bed and get to the shelter safely. Our shelter partners include: Cambridge Shelter Corporation, SHIP (Edith Mac and 84 Frederick Street), House of Friendship ShelterCare, OneROOF and YW Cambridge.

FirstConnect is a service to explore alternatives to emergency shelter. This includes the whole community. All of our community partners work together to support each caller who calls FirstConnect. Whether it be a 5-minute conversation or follow up call that last several hours over a few days, we will work with you and our community partners to find the best outcome for you.

How Have We Helped?

Every day, we take many calls from our community reaching out for support. Our call volume has increased by 77% from 2021 to 2025. Even with the growing need in our community, we remain committed to exploring alternatives to shelter to prevent or end your homeless experience.

We support a lot of community members who are looking for better housing options, emergency shelter and trouble shooting their housing issues.

Between January to September 2025, any calls we received where someone was experiencing housing instability or homelessness and was looking to access an emergency shelter, through our FirstConnect conversations, we were able to prevent someone’s homelessness or divert them to a safe alternative to emergency shelter 76% of the time. That’s hundreds of people that we were able to support with finding a safe alternative to emergency shelter- preventing or ending their homeless experience.

How Can You Connect with Us?

You can call us, anytime, by phone at 519-624-9133.

If you do not have a phone, please go to a local drop-in center, library or emergency shelter and you can ask to use their phone to call us. Shelters are open overnight and can provide you with access to a phone to call us.

Here are a few locations where you can go to call us (check hours of operation before you go):

Region of Waterloo, 150 Main Street, Cambridge
Region of Waterloo, 99 Regina Street, Waterloo
Region of Waterloo, 150 Frederick Street, Kitchener
Kitchener City Hall, 200 King Street West, Kitchener
Kitchener Public Library, 85 Queen Street North, Kitchener
John’s Kitchen, 97 Victoria Street North, Kitchener
Ray of Hope, 659 King Street East, Kitchener (door at the back of the building)

We are here for you, 24/7. If you don’t get through to us right away, please leave a voicemail and our team will call you back as soon as we can.

FirstConnect in Emergency Shelters

We have two FirstConnect Outreach Workers who can connect directly with you if you are staying in shelter to explore possible alternatives to shelter. We sit down with you to expand on the conversation you had with us over the phone and work alongside you to overcome barriers to exiting housing.

Shelter Diversion Community of Practice

First Connect has teamed up with Canadian Shelter Transformation Network (CSTN) to launch a nation-wide Shelter Diversion Community of Practice (CoP). This CoP brings together diversion workers, supervisors, managers and leaders of this work to reflect on trends, themes, best practices and challenges to strengthen the work we do across our communities. The recordings of the first two sessions can be found here. If you are a shelter diversion worker or work within a team doing this work, please reach out to Laura to be added to our registration list at laurac.argus@execulink.com.