City’s emergency shelter could move to Wolfe Street facility
Community Services offices proposed as overflow shelter when deal with church expires
The city may be converting its Community Services office building on Wolfe Street into an emergency homeless shelter.
The recommendation from city staff will be presented to councillors at a committee meeting on Monday.
The idea is to convert the city’s office building at 210 Wolfe St., into a temporary shelter for at least the next two years, staffed by workers from Brock Mission.
It would be what the city calls an “overflow” shelter, to accommodate people when the other shelters (such as Brock Mission) are full.
Although an overflow shelter is now operating at Murray Street Baptist Church, the city’s agreement with the church expires at the end of December — at which time the congregation may or may not vote to keep the shelter in place, according to a new city staff report.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has created a need for physical distance between shelter beds and sometimes for isolation rooms.
While there had been no confirmed case of COVID-19 in the shelter system by the end of September, the report states that the city has had to arrange for motel stays in the pandemic for homeless people who needed to self-isolate pending a COVID-19 test result.
The city had arranged for 120 motel stays as of Oct. 6, states the report. At the start of the pandemic those motel fees were averaging $100,000 a month, though that cost has recently decreased by half.
Meanwhile, the Wolfe Street building is city-owned and sitting empty. It hasn’t had any workers in it during the pandemic as it’s city policy to have as many of its employees working from home as possible (and that isn’t expected to change in the near future, the report states).
If the building were to become a shelter, a plan would be developed to ensure the 15 workers whose offices are on Wolfe Street could permanently work elsewhere.
The city could fund a new overflow shelter in various ways, states the report. For example, $1.9 million is available from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing if the city can make a business case for the new shelter.
The city has also applied for $2.2 million from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and could also dip into its own social services reserve fund of $4.3 million, the report states.
Although the city considered 14 other locations — including the Peterborough Public Library auditorium, which served as a temporary overflow shelter in 2019 — staff prefers the Wolfe Street location because it’s currently vacant and only needs showers to be installed to serve as a shelter.
The library auditorium was ruled out because it’s being used to quarantine returned books and to store furniture that has been removed in the library for better physical distancing, the report states.
Other city-owned buildings were considered, such as the vacant Northcrest Arena in the city’s north end — but the arena needs costly structural repairs and was therefore deemed unsuitable.
Other buildings that aren’t city-owned were considered as well, including the Peterborough Armoury — but that location was ruled out because firearms are on site (which would mean expensive security would be required).
Meanwhile, the city’s shelter for men, Brock Mission, is temporarily located in the modern wing of the former St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church at Water and Murray streets.
Although the historic portion of the church is under demolition, a modern wing of the building (which has a gym) remains intact. This summer, the city installed new medicalgrade bed dividers there to safely shelter men in the pandemic.
A new Brock Mission is under construction on Murray Street in the same location where the derelict shelter was razed in 2017. The new facility is now expected to open in March, the report states.