Achi news desk-
The cold season for shelters in Moncton is almost over.
Overnight accommodation for 50 people at the hub on St George’s Street will end on April 30, but the resource center will remain open 24/7.
Up on the High Street, Harvest House is downsizing from 114 beds to 60 for the summer season.
Nazareth House on Albert Street has the beds available to take in some of that overflow.
Marc Belliveau, Harvest House Atlantic senior director, communications and strategic partnerships, said last winter 195 people used shelter beds 50 percent of the time.
“We have 174 beds in Moncton. The hub also has an additional 50 seats that people can sit in at night. So we know we have enough capacity for people who use shelters more than fifty percent,” Belliveau said. “A lot of people think about it because there aren’t enough beds for people after the winter. It’s really there for people who use beds regularly.”
The hub is funded by the province and run by the John Howard Society of Southeast New Brunswick.
Executive director Dan Brooks said it was always intended to be a resource center for navigating community assets for those experiencing or on the verge of homelessness.
Starting Wednesday, it will operate more like triage for individuals seeking help.
“Instead of kind of spinning them around and pointing them in a direction and hoping someone else can help them,” Brooks said. “Our goal is really to identify what their needs are and then provide warm support to a community partner who will be able to help them with their specific circumstances and situation.”
According to the New Brunswick Human Development Council, 575 individuals experience homelessness for at least one day in April and 310 experience chronic homelessness.
The center will still have room for 50 people, but in chairs, not beds.
So shelter space, with or without a bed, still exists.
Moncton City Councillor, Charles Leger, said that the city’s homelessness problem has developed over the past few years.
“We see perhaps more activity on our streets. Remember the drop in center is still here. It will still offer a place for people to be,” said Leger. “We still face challenges. We’ve got a lot of people with addiction issues and so on, but at the end of the day I think we’re making progress.”
Leger said the city council has given Nazareth House three grants totaling $37,500 a year over a three-year period for projects they have planned for some time.
“They are designated to have 64 beds, which they have all the time. Like other shelters, they have a fixed number of beds, but when we were looking at the response out of the cold, they increased their beds significantly and they are ready to do it again,” said Leger .
CTV News reached out to House of Nazareth for comment, but did not hear back.
Brooks was asked if he believed there would be enough beds for the summer season in Moncton.
“We will know early on if additional resources are needed. I don’t have full access to all that information, so I can’t speak to him, but I can say that the information that’s been shared, that’s the goal and that’s what we’re working towards,” said Brooks.
Winter season
This was the first year that the John Howard Society ran the shelter and resource centre.
Brooks said 750 unique individuals used the facility in March, but only a small percentage used the beds regularly.
“Overall as an operator, I’m going to say that I think things have gone fairly well. Did they go perfectly? Not completely. Did we have peaks and valleys? Of course,” Brooks said. “In my mind we did a good job. We kept people safe and warm and alive and we did it with the help of a lot of people.”
Belliveau said it was one of the best winters for the homeless support organizations in Moncton who are all working together to increase capacity to what was really needed.
“Then all the agencies were saying, ‘Now what else can we do? How can we get people connected to housing?'” said Belliveau. why we had enough time to do the planning to prepare for today to make sure we had enough beds, we had enough resources to support the community during this transition period.”
