Maritime outreach groups look to get people housed as winter approaches

As it gets progressively colder, the urgency to get people off the streets grows -- an urgency that is not lost on emergency shelters around the Maritimes.

Shelters like the Souls Harbour Rescue Mission in Halifax, which prepares lunch for those who need it every day.

“Souls Harbour’s mission is to provide emergency services, food, clothing and shelter as well as life-changing recovery programs,” says the organization’s CEO, Michelle Porter.

Those services are always in greater demand when winter weather starts to roll in, she says, getting people fed and out of the cold becomes a top priority.

“I think as a community we need to be thinking outside the box until we can build affordable, safe housing for people. And if that means clearing out a building and putting up cots and temporary dividers, then that’s what it means,” Porter says.

Father Chris VanBuskirk, whose church in Moncton, N.B., was kept open last winter as a shelter, said he wasn’t going to do the same thing this year but with the number of homeless people in the city growing, he’s changed his mind.

“I think what we have to do is we have to deal with it. We have to deal with the problem,” says VanBuskirk.

He says he’s never seen the situation as bad as it is right now.

“We’ve been trying to monitor the morale of people and there are some that, whose morale is still pretty good but there are some other vulnerable individuals, some seniors and they are not prepared to be outside,” says VanBuskirk.

In Dartmouth, N.S., housing advocate Jim Graham says there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. A few housing projects are close to being ready for winter, enough to get 150 people off the streets.

“We are making progress. It’s maybe not visible and it’s slow and we need more but things are starting to look a lot better I would say,” said Graham.

The Nova Scotia government announced Thursday that it would provide funding for another emergency shelter in Halifax Regional Municipality this winter to help people experiencing homelessness.

The province says the 20-bed shelter will open in Dartmouth in early December.