City offices to become emergency shelter
Wolfe Street building empty with employees working from home
City councillors gave final approval on Monday to convert the empty city-owned office building on Wolfe Street into an emergency homeless shelter with 50 beds, open 24-7.
The vote came after council heard a plea from Dan Hennessey, an advocate for Peterborough’s marginalized people, to rethink how the shelter will be run.
Hennessey asked council to make it a “low-barrier shelter,” where people can stay even when high on drugs, for example.
He also expressed concern
over Brock Mission staff operating the shelter, saying homeless men are regularly banned from the Brock (no one from the shelter was at the meeting to comment, and no comment was available Tuesday either).
People experiencing homelessness can and do die when they ’re turned away from emergency shelters, Hennessey said.
“I’m asking to you take a really hard long look at this,” he said.
Later in the meeting Coun. Kemi Akapo asked city staff why they recommended Brock Mission staff operate the new shelter.
“Running a shelter is a very difficult business to be in,” said Sheldon Laidman, city commissioner of community services.
Laidman said there are few groups in Peterborough doing this work, and that there was no time to offer a competitive bidding process when a “overflow” shelter is needed immediately to house people when other shelters such as the Brock 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.
The building has served as offices for the community services department since 2017. With employees working from home, it hasn’t been used since the pandemic broke out.
Coun. Dean Pappas expressed concern that Town Ward already has a disproportionate number of social services.
“Poverty is a city of Peterborough problem, not a downtown problem ... We can’t keep stacking social services in one area,” he said.
The Town Ward councillor said he visited recently, and saw cars arriving and leaving in a furtive fashion; he said he “could only speculate” what was taking place.
Pappas said he alerted police, and added that the city “will need to clean up the existing issue in that area ... And not enable people who have addictions.”