St. Boniface Street Links hopes to have emergency shelter open by next week

St. Boniface Street Links is working overtime to get its pop-up warming shelter and 24/7 safe space open in time for next week's cold snap.

The organization has been working for months on opening a shelter in a vacant city-owned building at 604 St. Mary's Rd., the same place they opened a pop-up shelter last year.

Executive director Marion Willis saidthey just need an occupancy permit from the City of Winnipeg to be approved, which she's hoping to have in hand Thursday.

"It allows us to jump into action this weekend," she said.

The pop-up shelter will have about 20 beds for people during the winter months, while St. Boniface Street Links is also setting up some private rooms for people who are having a mental health crisis, Willis said.

"[We're] really hoping to fill some gaps here, take some pressure off the emergency rooms, the hospitals, off Winnipeg Police Service and paramedics by doing what we can to help stabilize people," she said.

In addition to providing emergency shelter, the organization will link people with housing and income supports to help them getoff the streets, Willis said. The organization also provides temporary accommodations for its clients at the La Salle Hotel on Nairn Avenue while they wait for more permanent housing.

When St. Boniface Street Links opened its pop-up shelter last year, about a third of the people who went through were able to find housing through these supports.

This year, they are in a much better position to get people into homes through the organization's relationships with property owners and the business community, Willissaid.

"We've done a lot of that pre-planning in terms of establishing our partnership teams," she said.

The opening of the shelter comes about a month after two people were found dead in a tent in a Point Douglas park, which led to heightened concerns about the toll the winter weather was taking on the city's most vulnerable.

Last month, the City of Winnipeg and End Homelessness Winnipeg-Reaching Home gave $265,000 to open an expanded pop-up shelter at Siloam Mission whenever the weather isforecast to feel like 10 C with the windchill three days in advance, and when other emergency shelters are full.

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Other shelters filling up

Siloam Mission and Ndinawe have already opened their pop-up shelters, and despite milder-than-usual weather, those spaces have been filling up nightly, End Homelessness Winnipeg CEO Jason Whitford said.

The opening of the St. Mary's Road shelter will help meet the need for spaces, but more must be done over thelong term to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place,Whitford said.

There's not enough available housing to keep up with the rate at which people are becoming homeless, he said.

"We have some resources in the community doing some great, great work, but what we really need is that housing inventory, and we need to work at prevention."

There needs to be a hard look at what is causing people to become homeless, and slowing that flow down, he said.

"Otherwise we're just going to be going in a constant cycle."

WATCH | St. Boniface Street Links hopes to have emergency shelter open by next week:

St. Boniface Street Links director shows off Winnipeg warming shelter

10 months ago

Duration 2:18

Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links, says the organization has been working for months on opening a shelter in a vacant city-owned building at 604 St. Mary's Rd., the same place they opened a pop-up shelter last year.