City gives three-year extensions to shelter programs
City council plans to extend agreements for another three years — from 2021 to 2024 — with the organizations that operate emergency homeless shelters locally.
During budg et talks on Wednesday night, council voted to extend its agreements with:
> Brock Mission
For: Operation of both Brock Mission shelter for men (open 24-7 all year, with 32 beds) and Cameron House shelter for women (open 24-7 all year, with seven beds)
Term: April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2024
Cost: $1.1 million annually
> YES Shelter for Youth and Families
For: Operation of Yes shelter (open 24-7 all year, with 20 beds for young people)
Term: April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2024
Cost: $669,400 annually
> Four Counties Addiction Service
For: Operation of the rapid rehousing program, which helps people with addiction issues or housing supports as needed, states a staff report, which helps to prevent re-entry into emergency shelters
Term: April 1, 2021, to March 31, 2024
Cost: $150,900 annually
The costs for 2021 for all these services combined is $136,500 more than the city paid in 2020, according to the report, to cover wage increases.
The report adds the city is also paying Brock Mission to staff an emergency overnight shelter at Murray Street Baptist Church with 17 beds. This shelter is used when the other 24hour shelters are full.
That shelter will continue to operate through the winter, until at least April (at which time the agreement between the city and the church expires, though the congregation may consider a potential extension).
Meanwhile the city is renovating its empty office building at 210 Wolfe St. to convert it into an overflow shelter. That new shelter is expected open Jan. 4, 2021, and to have up to 50 beds.
Coun. Keith Riel said at the meeting Wednesday that the new shelter on Wolfe Street will be barrier-free — meaning people aren’t banned when they’ve been drinking or using drugs.
He also said the new Brock Mission — which is under construction on Murray Street and expected open in March — will be “state-of-the-art.”
Riel, the co-chair of housing for the city, along with Coun. Henry Clarke, said Wednesday he’s tired of recent reporting in The Examiner that doesn’t mention the city’s hard work to house the homeless.
“Get your story straight: this council puts money where its mouth is,” he said.
Meanwhile, the city moved recently to disperse marginalized people who’d been illegally tenting at the so-called Hole in the Fence near the Wolfe Street site, Riel said, as reported in The Examiner.
But the city is providing shelter space for those people, Riel said.
He said those gathered at the Hole in the Fence were there to socialize and take drugs together.
“The majority of those people had a place to go and a place to stay,” he said.
“If they’d like to live rough, it’s a free country.”
Clarke said he “echoes” Riel’s sentiments that the city is doing good work toward finding housing for people: for example, 387 homeless people have been helped by the city to find housing between January and October this year.
“I think the efforts we have made shows us to be a just city,” Clarke said.
Mayor Diane Therrien said the city is aiming to end chronic homelessness and “needs to be putting pressure” on upper levels of government to help.
“It’s cheaper to house people than to put them through the shelter system,” she said, adding that when a young person particularly is housed it can help them avoid revisiting a shelter in adulthood.
“There are people being housed ... There are young people being provided with a life, so they don’t have to experience homelessness,” Therrien said.
“And we’ll continue to pressure the provincial government to come to the table.”