Temporary shelter moving from FirstOntario Centre to former boys school next month

The city and Good Shepherd will dismantle a temporary homeless shelter at FirstOntario Centre next month and move it to an old school on Main Street East — and some neighbours aren't happy about it.

The downtown arena has served as a temporary 75-bed shelter since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. City officials, worried about local homeless shelters lacking the space to keep people distanced, set up the beds on the arena floor, and tent encampments soon lined the sidewalk.

Now the city and Good Shepherd, which runs the centre, are preparing to move operations to 378 Main St. E., which is the former Cathedral boys' school. 

"FirstOntario was month by month," said Edward John, the city's director of housing. It costs to keep the shelter there, he said, and eventually, FirstOntario Centre will go back to being an arena. 

"We recognized there was soon going to be pressure to move elsewhere."

The new men's shelter will fit 45 beds, and the city is giving Good Shepherd $550,000 to renovate the space. It's also giving Good Shepherd $700,000 to operate it from Sept. 1 to June 30.

Some residents of Stinson and Gibson and Lansdale are seeing the occupants as new neighbours, says Nrinder Nann, Ward 3 (central lower city) councillor. But not all of them feel that way.

Some fear encampments will pop up in the neighbourhood, Nann says, although the shelter is on private property now, and encampments won't be allowed on site.

Some say the area already has a high number of residential care facilities, and a shelter there is too much. Others are upset that the neighbourhood wasn't consulted first.

Resident Michelle Cho told councillors in a letter this week that the area already struggles with crime such as property damage, vandalism and thefts. The neighbourhood was getting better, she said, but in the last two years, "[Stinson] has been slowly transitioning back into toward the unsafe environment it used to be."

Some neighbourhood objections

"I have spoken to many neighbours in the Stinson area and ALL are against a homeless shelter coming to the old Cathedral boys school," she wrote.

Artur Gnandt wrote that he lives near the school, and "my 12-year-old is afraid to walk down the street." It's not uncommon, he said, to meet "drunks [and] drug users who will approach you for change or just to insult you."

"I'm not sure how many windshields I have to replace at my own expense."

Nann held an online public meeting about the shelter. She says she expected more negative feedback.

"Definitely, what we saw in the chat at the sidebar of the meeting was a few really vocal residents who clearly are not happy about the shelter coming in," she said. But "I was surprised, happily, that more of the comments were supportive."

Encampments remain

If there are issues, she said, "we will engage in addressing them."

"In non pandemic times we would have approached this via consultation, which usually has a 12 to 18-month time line. This decision was made in a pandemic and under emergency orders. We have a moral obligation to meet the needs of our vulnerable resident's needs."

The city has also decommissioned its temporary shelter at Bennetto Community Centre on Hughson Street North, where street-involved people with COVID-19 lived in quarantine, John said. Only three people have fit that criteria so far, and Wesley Urban Ministries now handles the quarantine process.

The city has also rented hotel rooms for as many as 50 people at a time. The city has hired two new street outreach workers, John says, and is focused on getting people into housing.

Encampments remain outside FirstOntario Centre and on Ferguson Street North, as well as other places. 

At the end of last month, a group of doctors, lawyers and harm reduction advocates won a 10-day injunction that barred the city from dismantling encampments during the pandemic. The court has extended that until September.