Renovations got underway Thursday at one of Moncton's homeless shelters.
Harvest House received a donation of more than $100,000 to help with the upgrades.
With temperatures plunging, the extra beds that will be added will offer warmth to those who are left out in the cold.
Contractors will be changing the layout of the shelter and adding a dozen more beds.
“We're really, really excited to upgrade our shelter and make it more efficient,” said Cal Maskery of Harvest House.
To help cover the cost, the Moncton Wesleyan Church took up a Christmas donation over the month of December.
“The most we'd ever done before was $50,000, so this was unprecedented,” said Pastor Nathan Adams of Moncton Wesleyan Church.
In the end the congregation presented a cheque of $109,000 to Harvest House.
“This was so spot on with the mission of the church that it just really galvanized people,” Adams said.
From the $109,000, $65,000 will go toward the renovations, the other $44,000 will help create the new women's nine-month addiction recovery program.
“That will be similar to our men's, there will be four group meetings a day,” Maskery said. “They'll join us for two of them … they'll have some outings, connections to the community with supervision,” Maskery said.
In the fall officials with the YMCA's Reconnect Program put the number of Moncton's “visible homeless” at 120.
With the Harvest House expansion and the recent opening of the Moncton's Out Of The Cold shelter, Maskery is confident there are enough beds to house the city's homeless.
“We don't have as many here at present, so this is the best possible time for us to be rebuilding this,” Maskery said. “Once the fire hall closes down in the spring, we are going to have a lot of people flooding back into Harvest House. We would have been overrun, but now will have at least another 12 to 14 beds.”
The goal is to have this done quickly, so crews will be working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day.
Once renovations are complete, they will have close to 50 beds.
Harvest House will remain open while the work is being done.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.
