A street level intervention drop-in centre that helps the homeless population in New Brunswick is being forced out of its home.
After 17 years, Moncton’s ReConnect Program has been given notice that its lease is being terminated early.
The program’s interim director Lisa Ryan says they program is currently dealing with issues that are difficult to manage.
“We’ve had a few individuals who’ve displayed more aggression toward one another and that has spilled out into our parking lot area,” Ryan says.
Ryan admits there have been complaints and police have been called, but she says steps have been taken to alleviate those concerns.
“We installed security cameras, we monitored the parking lots… we tried to really encourage our patrons to not loiter.”
The landlord has issued a notice of early termination of their lease as it was originally set to expire at the end of the 2018. Now, Ryan says the program needs to be out of the building by the end of May.
The mandate of the ReConnect Program is to help individuals who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
“We'll get a phone call if somebody has been sighted sleeping rough, whether it's in a tent or sleeping under a bridge, our outreach workers will bring a care package to the person with or contact information and try to spark conversation in order to get them assistance for housing and things like that.”
According to stats compiled by the YMCA there was more than 5,700 drop in visits to the centre in 2017. The centre handled 307 new clients and staff conducted 2400 street level interventions with an increase of 50 per cent from the previous year.
Ryan says the program will now face restructuring due to the early lease termination date.
“Instead of individuals accessing us all the time we're planning on making a more concerted effort to go to them where they are.”
Ryan says they'll try to partner with other outreach programs because their efforts to find a new home have been unsuccessful.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.
