Tent city must leave St. John’s Anglican Church
Trial shelter plan for Murray Street Baptist Church up for approval
The last remaining homeless people in tents will be vacating the property at St. John’s Anglican Church by the end of next week.
The tents will all be gone as October ends, Rev. Brad Smith wrote in an email to the Examiner.
Campers have been allowed to stay on church property since June, but Smith said it’s now getting too cold to remain.
Meanwhile on Monday, city council will vote a final time to set up cots for the homeless this winter at Murray Street Baptist Church. Employees of Brock Street Mission would staff the shelter.
Councillors gave preliminary approval to the plan at a committee meeting last week; final approval is needed at a city council meeting.
The congregation at Murray Street Baptist will be allowed to decide, after the program’s been running for a few weeks this winter, whether to commit to offering the program yearround for up to two years. While the congregation doesn’t want “active substance abuse” in the church, states a city staff report, homeless people with “substance use or mental health concerns” will be served by the shelter.
The now-defunct Warming Room emergency shelter previously occupied the lower level of Murray Street Baptist Church, but it closed July 1 for renovations, prompting homeless people to pitch tents at Victoria Park and St. John’s Anglican.
To run the new program at Murray Street Baptist for a year would cost $248,400.
That’s more than the $161,000 the city budgeted for emergency cots this year, but the staff report states the idea is to allow staff to put each homeless person’s name on a priority list for housing and help them find permanent shelter.
The $248,400 would also cover rent and custodial costs, which will be necessary because the dining hall would have to be cleaned daily so it can be used during daytime hours for other purposes.
Meanwhile an architect’s report recommends $80,000 in work required to the dining room at Murray Street Baptist Church so it can serve as a safe overnight dormitory.
Because the city would need to hire a contractor and order
parts for the dining hall renovation, the space won’t likely be ready by Nov. 1, the report states.
In that case the cots for the homeless in the auditorium of the Peterborough Public Library may continue to be offered “to ensure no gap in service,” states the report.