Saint John winter shelter location revealed

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Saint John’s winter homeless shelter will be located in the north end this coming season, transforming into a year-round homelessness hub come spring.

Once a police station, the Social Development building at 344 Somerset St. has been chosen for the location, with the shelter set to open on Dec. 1, said Department of Social Development spokesperson Rebecca Howland. It will hold 40 co-ed beds and run until the end of March, switching in April to a homeless hub model.

Outflow Ministry will run the shelter, Howland said, adding the organization “will work in collaboration with Fresh Start, which provides outreach services to those in encampments and the on streets.”

“Like every year, the permanent shelters have the ability to increase capacity across the system, to react to increased need in the colder months,” Howland said.

Outflow Ministry already runs a permanent, year-round, 30-bed men’s shelter in the city that opened in 2014.

Like the men’s shelter, the temporary winter shelter will be considered “low barrier,” meaning people under the influence will be able to stay, said Tony Dickinson, director of shelter and housing with Outflow.

The shelter will be open each night from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., he said.

The decision to expand the ministry’s service offerings was motivated by their Christian faith, Dickinson said, as well as an awareness to the growing number of people experiencing homelessness in the city.

“We were seeing more people in need of shelter,” he said.

The Human Development Council’s homelessness dashboard places the number of homeless people in Saint John at 237 in October, with 166 of these being chronically so.

When Outflow shelter first opened, it had a capacity of 20 beds. That number is now at 30 and has reached the maximum capacity of the ministry’s building on Waterloo Street, Dickinson said.

The shelter is “pretty consistently full,” he added. “Twenty-eight out of 30 beds would be a slow night.”

It means the shelter still has to turn people away, so when Social Development began seeking an operator for the winter shelter and hub, Dickinson said Outflow jumped at the opportunity.

This is not the first time the building on Somerset Street has housed a shelter. In 2020, it was home to the Coverdale women’s shelter while Coverdale waited to move into a new permanent building. The building had been renovated in 2014 to temporarily hold the Outflow men’s shelter, according to Brunswick News Archives.

The 2023 out of the cold shelter, operated by the Salvation Army in the decommissioned Hilton Belyea Arena in west Saint John, had capacity for up to 50 beds.

Last winter, Saint John Transit provided a shuttle service to and from the shelter.

Cara Coes, the city’s senior manager of community support services, said the city is consulting with the province and Outflow “to evaluate what might be required for transportation.”

Outflow Ministries will also operate the homeless hub, Howland said.

Howland previously told Brunswick News the year-round hub, a model being implemented in Fredericton and Moncton as well, won’t hold beds unless permanent shelters are at capacity. 

“The hub will be a 24/7 drop-in style service for the unhoused to connect with multiple services including Income Assistance, Health, Housing and non-profit organizations,” Howland said in an email on Monday.  “In addition, hub services may reflect any specific needs, for the unhoused, identified by the community.”

Dickinson likened the hub to a “one stop shop” for reducing chronic homelessness.

“The purpose of that facility is to provide folks with an opportunity to get into housing, sort of break the cycle of homelessness,” he said.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy,” he added. “It’s still going to be a lot of work, but the hub model has been proven to work elsewhere in the past so we’re excited to get in on the ground floor on that.”

The city’s role in the hub is still being figured out.

“We have been working closely with the Province and the community to fully understand what the hub concept will look like based on our community needs and determine what role the City will have,” Coes said.

With files from Nathan DeLong