The Mustard Seed Street Ministry's Foothills Winter Shelter will remain open another year, based on recommendations from The SEED, local businesses and The SEED's police liaison that were presented to the City of Calgary last week.
The shelter, which opened in November of last year and was slated to close May 1, 2008, is to remain operational until May 2009, when it will be evaluated again.
“The immediate implication for people was relief,” says Diana Schwenk, development officer for the Mustard Seed Street Ministry. “I didn’t realize this before, but there’s a countdown — people in the shelter knew it was a matter of weeks, and then days until the shelter would close.
“It has also momentarily taken existing pressure off shelters downtown that, on the whole, didn’t have to go over capacity. We ran the Brick shelter the previous year and we knew that to start up and close down a shelter is an administrative process, so we were quite excited that we’d be able to stay.”
The Foothills shelter is located in a vacant warehouse at 7025 44th St. S.E. in the foothills industrial area. The building is owned by the city and leased to The SEED for $150,000 per year. It costs an estimated $4 million to run each year and is funded in part by the provincial government.
The specially designed facility includes different sections that are walled off so its residents don’t feel like they’re living with 300 other people. It also features separate areas for men and women and a permanent dining area that doesn’t need to be taken down every night to make space for mats.”
The shelter can accommodate up to 370 people at a time. The current occupancy rate is 300 people per night, and over 1,400 unique individuals have been served since doors opened last year. One hundred of the 300 current residents have full-time jobs and another 100 have a combination of part-time or contract work. Many people can walk to work from the shelter.
“We’ve developed a good partnership with local businesses,” says Schwenk. “There is a ready labour force living in the shelter and surrounding companies are using it. We’ve had two job fairs at the Foothills location for temporary placements, training, etc. with great success. The one in March was three times as large as the one in December.”
With an estimated 4,000 people without homes in Calgary, “The city recognized the need for the shelter, at least until there’s enough affordable housing,” says Schwenk. She adds The SEED’s Foothills shelter and future plans for an affordable housing tower in the Beltline community fit well with the city’s 10-year plan to end homelessness. “Ideally, the results of the 10-year plan will include a greater emphasis on prevention, and if people come to a shelter, within a week or two they could move on.”
“The affordable housing tower will be based on a campus-type idea, with a variety of services available and a comprehensive, integrated program that links residents to other SEED services and creates a peer support system within the building.”
“We specifically target one of the homeless groups — single individuals. Other groups are seniors, people with severe drug addictions, people with severe mental health issues and families, but we’ve been working with this target group for over 20 years.”
The tower will be used by a variety of people, says Schwenk. Varying levels of support will be available for people recovering from addictions as well as those who are working and earning less than $15 per hour, yet are unable to afford rent.
The SEED has gone through a three-month tabling of the project in order to engage the beltline community and address resident concerns. Accordingly, high-rise plans have been scaled down, from a 31-storey, 410-unit building to a 25-storey building with 200 studio apartments.
The SEED goes before city council on April 14 with plans for the affordable housing tower. “We’ll be looking for a decision at that time,” says Schwenk.
