Kitchener losing 100 emergency shelter beds due to closure later this month

As another shelter in Kitchener prepares to close, the options for people living rough are dwindling. CTV’s Colton Wiens reports.

The King Street Emergency Shelter, located in the former Schwaben Club in Kitchener, will be closing on March 31.

“The city, the region is losing 100 spaces. There’s just no other way to describe it. And people will move and shuffle, but we are losing 100 spaces,” Joe Mancini, Director of The Working Centre said.

The emergency shelter is managed by The Working Centre. It opened in fall 2022 and quickly filled up. Mancini said since April of last year, they have helped 46 people find housing.

“But, of course, quickly new people were admitted into the shelter,” Mancini said.

Some of the people displaced by the recent closure will be able to find a safe place to stay at two women’s shelters in Kitchener and Cambridge, but Mancini said there is still a large gap left in the system.

“These are individuals without a place to go. Until we [have] enough shelter spaces for that group, you will continue to wander around without hope,” Mancini said.

The region contends there is space in the shelter system and it’s working to find housing for the remaining people at the King Street Shelter.

“We’ve been investing in capacity overall for our emergency shelter system over the last number of years and putting more investment onto the supportive housing and affordable housing side, too. So, there’s increased capacity from what there has been, and the goal at the end of this work at the end of the month is that everybody that is at King Street Shelter will have an offer of another space to be. That’s the goal of the work that’s happening right now,” Ryan Pettipiere, Director of Housing for the Region of Waterloo, said.

The Working Centre said since the shelter opened, neighbours have insisted it did not belong there, but neighbourhood incidents have gone down and officials said the shelter and the people who stay there have established a stable culture. However, that newly found sense of belonging will be jeopardized by the closure.

Neighbouring businesses CTV News spoke to said they have seen a few issues with the clients at the shelter, but overall, it hasn’t been a problem and they worry about where the people will go.

Pettipere said the region has stopped taking new clients at the shelter, but the closure has nothing to do with complaints.

“This has been a planned closure for a number of months now. It was never intended to be a permanent option,” Pettipiere said.

“It was to help fill a gap until we could increase capacity elsewhere. So there have been challenges, at the site. That’s not the reason that this one is closing. We have a lease that’s now ending,” Pettipere said.

Pettipere added while there are no new shelters being built, permanent housing for all is their goal.

“These opening and closing of temporary spaces have been - they’re really hard on the people that use them. They’re hard on the staff that work there. They’ve been hard on the neighborhoods, as well. We’re really trying to invest in permanent infrastructure moving forward to avoid some of this opening and closing. Overall, it’s hard on an entire community,” Pettipere said.

The Working Centre is opening 44 supportive housing units on Victoria Street, but Mancini said those won’t be ready until at least September.

High-rise apartments are scheduled to be built on the site the King Street Emergency Shelter currently occupies.