Hamilton’s outdoor shelter now has 19 residents and the plan is that it is full at the end of the month, the city’s operators and officials say.
The temporal refuge in Barton St. W., whose objective is to serve people for whom traditional emergency shelters are not adequate, It was supposed to open in December But he faced numerous delays.
Mayor Andrea Horwath acknowledged that during a tour and press conference the city organized for journalists on Friday.
“I expected the space to be operational before the snow fly,” he said. “But I am very, very happy that we are here today.”
The shelter is the first of its kind in Hamilton, but the model, in which residents live in small cabins and share separate common spaces, is not new. Similar public and private administration projects Based on small houses have operated on Kitchener-Waterloo and Kingston.
The proponents say that the model is a faster and more cheap alternative to build traditional shelters, and offers a safer alternative to camps for people who cannot or may not go to shelters.
The Good Shepherd Social Services provider is managing operations on the site. Operations Director Katherine Kalinowski Previously he told CBC Hamilton The site would be aimed at people living in camps, especially couples and those with pets. In general, emergency shelters do not allow pets or allow people to accommodate with romantic adult relatives or couples.
“Our approach is to help people move from survival and subsistence to find a new place to call their home in this community,” Kalinowski said on Friday, adding that residents told their team that the site is “transformative.”
Friday’s tour did not include an opportunity for journalists to meet and talk to residents, but they could see inside an empty cabin and some of the common areas. The music was played inside an occupied cabin and someone had some of their established belongings outside, including bicycles. In the kitchen, a half -completed puzzle was on a table.
The 40 cabins of the site are prefabricated and the city administrator, Marnie Cluckie, said they are winter. Between individual and double units, there will be space for 80 people on the site, say the city officials. Common spaces include bathrooms, laundry and a community space that functions as a kitchen.
During the tour, Good Shepherd said there are currently 24 beds available with more opening as construction continues. Each cabin has a bed, small and fridge television, Aaron Deanes, said the site director. The individual cabins are the same as the doubles, but they have a wall that divides into the fire that separates the rooms.
Many residents on the site will have experienced trauma, loss, violence and stigma, said Kalinowski. For them, the ability to close and close a door at night is a big problem, he added.
The city leaders have said that the outdoor site is temporary, but it is not clear how long it will be in use. There is no target timeline of how long residents can remain, Kalinowski said.
While living on the site, residents will have access to services, including a clinic and workers who will help them to move on to more permanent housing forms when possible.
There will be a green space once hot. There will also be a space for dogs, which residents must maintain with a strap and are encouraged to walk through the neighborhood. The shelter will provide poop bags.
Good Shepherd is working with the city’s animal services department to make sure they know the dogs that come to the site and can handle them, said Kalinowski, and added so far, there are more cats in residence.
The shelter will also offer damage reduction supplies for drug users.
Kalinowski previously told CBC Hamilton that, although drug use would not be officially allowed, the use of substances would probably not result in residents being expelled.
“What we are [doing] Instead of telling people what to do is encourage and support people to be safe, take care of their health and take care of each other, “he said in January.
The shelter will be for 24 hours. Visitors overnight will not be allowed.
The lack of housing is a “humanitarian crisis,” Kalinowski said on Friday, referring to a Recent Report of the Association of Municipalities of OntarioHe found that more than 80,000 people had no home in the province last year.
The report also found that there are 25 percent more people living in shelters or in the streets two years ago.
City officials said in Hamilton that there are around 1,600 people who experience homeless people and 200 in camps. They said that once the outdoor site is completely operational, the city will have added 272 shelter spaces since January, an increase of 80 percent and the largest in 20 years.
