Loving a neighbourhood into being: Project tackles one piece of the homelessness puzzle - Action News
Home WebMail Wednesday, November 13, 2024, 08:11 AM | Calgary | -0.5°C | Regions Advertise Login | Our platform is in maintenance mode. Some URLs may not be available. |
New Brunswick

Loving a neighbourhood into being: Project tackles one piece of the homelessness puzzle

A joint project between the John Howard Society of Southeastern New Brunswick and Visions United Church hopes to provide a safe and affordable home for 20 men, and a community of support.

John Howard Society, Visions United Church aim to provide safe, affordable housing and community connection

Visions United Church Rev. Shawn Redden, left, and Joanne Murray, executive director of the John Howard Society, on the Moncton lot that will be home to 20 apartments and a community centre that will include gathering space and a community kitchen. (Vanessa Blanch/CBC)

For Joanne Murray and Rev. Shawn Redden, solving the growing affordable housing crisis isn't just about putting a roof over someone's head.

Standing in the middle of an empty, two-acre lot in Moncton'seast end, the two women point out where anew apartment building and community centre will be standingby next fall.

The $4.5 million "Community Hub" will include 20 one-bedroom apartments on Joyce Avenue, along with a large gathering space, community kitchen and office space for non-profit organizations.

Murray, executive director of the John Howard Society of Southeastern New Brunswick, said the concept is to provide more than apartments for the homeless men who often feel like outsiders who will move in.

Drawings show the one-bedroom apartments on the right-hand side of the building and the Community Hub on the left. (Submitted by Joanne Murray)

"They become disconnected," she said.

"First because people shut them out and then because they feel they don't belong. And so by building community around them, it's their community. So they don't have to fit in. This is theirs."

Murray has submitted the project for funding under the new 10-year $299.2 million housing agreement the province has signed with Ottawa. Visions United will lease space in the community centre.

Thegoal of the housing agreement is to create 151 new affordable housing units in New Brunswick in the first three years.

Residents will find acceptance

The John Howard Society already has 10 affordable apartments in a building on Flanders Court in Moncton, which Murraysaid has helped dozens of tenants find support to move on with their lives.

Mario Ct, 48, moved into that buildingin June when he found himself with no place to live.

A person with their hood up next to a bicycle piled with orange bags
In New Brunswick, more than 500 people are homeless and thousands are waiting for affordable housing. Mario Ct says finding a safe place to live with structure and support has changed his life. (Pierre Fournier/CBC News)

"It's extremely hard especially when you're coming out of addiction and you don't quite have your legs underneath you," he said of trying to find an apartment he could afford.

Ct, who wasaddicted to cocaine and opiates for 30 years, is now in recovery and working.

When you're shown kindness and support, it makes you want to give it back to people.-Mario Ct

He credits the staff at the John Howard Society and the nine other men who live in his apartment building with giving him the structure and security he needed to change his life.

"Here right now is the closest thing I have to a family," he said. "The community is super important.

"Those are the things that make you want to go another day and also, when you're shown kindness and support, it makes you want to give it back to people."

More than a Sunday service

ForRedden's congregation, becoming a partner in the Community Hub is a decision that was a long time coming.

The 175 families who are part of Visions United Church no longer wanted to put their time and money into maintaining a large church and have instead chosen to lease space in the new development for their ministry offices and for Sunday worship.

Members of the congregation at Visions United Church, who want their faith to be about more than a Sunday service, marched in the recent Pride Parade. (Submitted by Visions United Church)

"We don't want to be putting our resources into a building all on our own," she said. "We wanted to be freed up to be about living our faith and offering community to people."

Redden believes Moncton is on the cusp of becoming a big city with "big city problems," and now is the perfect time to step up to be part of something larger than a Sunday church service.

"A church by its very nature is a community of people. So just by Visions going about its normal, everyday activities and programs, there arepeople coming and going that can interact with, befriend, get to know, be in relationships with the residents if they so choose."

Not a halfway house

Murray and Redden have hosted three public information sessions about the Community Hub and have heard concerns they are opening a "halfway house," which is not the case.

The tenants will be men between theages of 19 and 55 who will be chosen from Moncton's "by-name list," which includes everyonewho is experiencing homelessness in the city.

The site of the new project is surrounded by different types of housing, including townhouses, NB Housing apartments and single-family homes. (Vanessa Blanch/CBC)

"They have plans and goals and they just need a little bit of help with housing in terms of affordability but also they want to live in community," Murray said.

The apartments will be owned and managed by theJohn Howard Society using a peer-support model that has already proven successful in Moncton.

In the new development, in addition to support from case managers, tenants will be supportedby two on-site superintendents who have themselves experienced homelessness in the past.

Murray said since the Flanders Court residence opened nine years ago, there have been "zero issues."

The John Howard Society has 10 one-bedroom apartments at Flanders Court, pictured above, in Moncton. Murray says there have been 'zero issues' for neighbours. (Submitted by Joanne Murray)

Helping neighbours to connect

While the John Howard Society will offerprogramsfor tenants such as job counselling, financial counselling, mental health and addictions counselling, the Community Hub willalso provide less formal supports.

Redden hopes members of her congregation, tenants and other neighbours will mingle and sing in the church choir or take part in a community supper.

I finally belong somewhere.- Mario Ct

"There's been studies that show the mental health benefits of singing in a choir OK, well we've got thousands of years history of doing that right? That's a resource," Redden laughed.

"People just gathering together, getting to know one another that's what creates healthy relationships. I think that's what the church helps to bring."

Murray and Redden hope the community centre and the new apartments, shown in this drawing, will open in the fall of 2020. (Submitted by Joanne Muray)

Connectionscure loneliness, transform people

At the housing units the John Howard Society already operates, Murray said one of the "most transformative" thingswas agarden plantedby a staff member.

"Eventually one person stopped and helped, and then another. Then she put a picnic table out, then she brought food out."

By the end of the summer, Murray remembers, people were sitting and eating together around that table.

"They were laughing and talking and stuff was happening. People were talking out some of the things that they sit with at night."

This garden was the beginning of many connections for tenants at the John Howard Society's housing units on Flanders Court in Moncton. (Submitted by Joanne Murray)

Cthelped to tend that garden and describes the experience as "awesome."

"It was the first time that I've been involved in growing a garden and I really truly loved it."

To him, the garden was an analogy for life, he said.

"You know the work you put in a garden and a few weeks later you're cultivating fresh fruits from it it's a good example for what you do in life also pulling out the weedsand what's not good, watering what is good."

ForCt, cooking and sharing meals in the community kitchen at Flanders Court is the "absolute best."

"I finally belong somewhere right."

Caring for your neighbour

Murray and Redden have seen thenegative impacts loneliness has on mental and physical health, and want the tenants at the Community Hub to connect, and feel what it is like "to have someone care for them."

How do we love neighbourhoods into being? How do we love communities into being?- Rev. Shawn Redden

"If we start by looking at people's potential and looking at people's gifts and their strengths first, as opposed to their problems that's where transformation can happen," Murray said.

"One relationship at a time can absolutely change a community."

When Redden thinks of the new Community Hub, she is reminded of a question children's television host Fred Rogers used to ask on Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood.

"He would often ask people to think for a moment.Who are the personswho loved you into being?And so for us How do we love neighbourhoods into being? How do we love communities into being?"