Temporary shelter in downtown Kitchener church closes Monday

A temporary homeless shelter set up at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in downtown Kitchener is set to close onMonday.

Opening the church doors was an initiative of The Working Centre, whichworked in collaboration with a group called the Inner City Health Alliance.

It's a group of non-profits thattook action after the temperature dropped and a significant amount of snow fell on the region on Nov.11.

Since that time, the church's outreach co-ordinatorRianne Rops saysthe number of homeless who took temporary shelter increased from the first night when only 60 showed up.

"I would say we averaged about 100 people a night,"Rops said. "We've, to date, had 196 different individuals come use our space. But not all of them are there at once. And about 40 of them are youth."

The number of young people was the biggest shock for Rops. She said many of them were concerned about what was going to happen after Nov. 25 because they havenowhere to go and they were afraid of freezing to death.

Region sites to open

St. Mary'sreceived funding support from the region to run the last-minute program.

The Region of Waterloo is scheduled to begin providing long term shelter Monday at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in downtown Kitchener. It will have 45 overnight spaces available for people in need.

An overflow site will be available at the Bridges Shelter in Cambridge and there is a search for a third site.

St. Mary's can't be an additional site as they'll be out of commission for a number of months for a scheduled renovation that starts in early December, Rops said.

But she wants the area to be available next year.

"In the future long term,we want to be key players in in supporting whatever gaps are going on downtown," Rops said.