STAPLES Mustard Seed eyes shelter on south side
Mustard Seed confident it can pull it off in the right location — with the right approach
Social housing for homeless folks on Edmonton’s south side? That’s rarer than snow in July.
Nonetheless, such housing is needed and it’s likely going to be built.
The Mustard Seed, which provides numerous services to homeless individuals in the inner city, is looking for a south-side location to build transitional housing. It would be for homeless people, giving them shortterm housing in preparation for finding a permanent residence.
At the Mustard Seed’s Calgary transitional shelter, residents stay on average 11 nights before moving on, says managing director Dean Kurpjuweit.
Not everyone is going to love the idea of such housing on the south side, as Kurpjuweit is well aware, but he thinks it can work.
“What we’ll be sensitive too is NIMBY, not in my back yard, and there’s a new thing called NOTE, not over there either,” Kurpjuweit says. “We’ll try to be sensitive to that and if we’re able to do this, find an area that is right for the neighbourhood and also right for people who would need the service.” It might be located in an industrial area. “I think that would be ideal,” Kurpjuweit says, noting the Calgary transitional shelter is in an industrial area.
Can the Mustard Seed succeed in blazing this trail? It won’t be easy to convince residents. It certainly wasn’t when a major social housing complex for the Terwillegar area was called off in 2013 after the local community erupted in protest. People feared for the safety of their families, worried about public disorder and about the lack of support services for former street people in the suburbs.
“The Terwillegar thing was an unfortunate explosion caused by multiple fuel sources: bad planning, lack of transparency, uncertainty about what kind of project would work on that spot,” says Ward 10 Coun. Michael Walters.
To avoid any new explosion of protest, Walters and others are proactively talking about the need for such a south-side facility and are focused on getting it right, with the housing near transit and support services, such as medical care.
Walters expects residents will step up for the right projects.
“It’s a new challenge for the south side,” he says, adding residents there have been generous in raising money for charity and volunteering.
The south side is already dealing with homelessness and its related crime, disorder and related medical emergency and policing costs, so it’s time to act, Walters says.
“The best way to deal with the chaos associated with homelessness is to house people well.”
One key for any such project is the track record of the sponsoring organization, Walters says.
The Mustard Seed shines here. It’s been around for three decades since two Baptist church congregations started up a soup kitchen in an old inner-city church. It now feeds up to 300 people each night. It also does reintegration work with folks coming out of prison, gives counselling, runs two major social housing projects, and has a number of drop-in centres across the city, including one near Whyte Avenue where the homeless can get foot care, a shower and laundry services.
The organization has much public support, as seen from its $4.8-million annual budget, with 70 per cent raised from private donors, partly through major fundraising events such as Hockey Helps the Homeless, which runs May 11 at the Terwillegar Rec Centre.
Two things can help break someone out of homelessness, Kurpjuweit says: “Secure employment and a secure place to live.”
It’s not in the city’s interest to see the inner-city ghetto grow, Kurpjuweit said, but there is an interest in having the homeless get care where they already congregate.
There are pockets of poverty throughout Edmonton, Kurpjuweit says, and we can’t expect all the homeless to be housed downtown.
“That’s not only foolish, it’s hurtful to our community as a whole because you create a ghetto. You also tell people who are struggling that they don’t belong in the community that they exist in.”
The key this time is to get the project right, but also to take it easy with opponents, which means not insisting they’re morally obligated to do the right thing, Kurpjuweit says.
“I think the way to go about this is gentle. I think people respect gentleness.”
I agree with Kurpjuweit that such a project can be sold to residents, but only if the project is the right one in the right spot.
The right argument is already in place, that when such housing is done right, it doesn’t increase chaos in our neighbourhoods, it decreases it.