As of Jan. 21, the Fredericton Exhibition Centre opened up a new out-of-the-cold shelter for unhoused residents in the area.
Warren Maddox is the executive director of Fredericton Homeless Shelters and is working to make sure housing like the recent shelter project stays efficient and operational.
“It’s colder than hell,” said Maddox “We’re watching the bed counts in our house each night and because we’ve been ticking at a 100 per cent capacity for five nights in a row, that’s a flag for us that the demand is greater than our supply.”
Features of the seasonal location include sleeping accommodations for 32 people, access to personal hygiene facilities and warming areas.
Social Development Minister Cindy Miles said that it’s been a “long path” to open the shelter which is available to anyone from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. each day, according to the Fredericton Homeless Shelters website.
The shelter will prolong hours to remain open for 24 hours a day during long stretches of extreme cold temperatures.
“Everybody wants a space for folks to feel safe and warm, but the challenge was finding a space in neighbourhoods where folks felt comfortable having it,” said Miles.
She said that her department is looking into ways of creating sustainable long-term solutions for the unsheltered population with a “housing first approach,” so there is less worry about hosting these temporary shelters.
This approach involves relocating those experiencing homelessness into long-term supportive housing at a swift pace.
“Everybody deserves a place to call home and I’m grateful to be a part of that conversation,” said Miles.
After Maddox’s experience working for the organization he said that the biggest misconception is that “there goes the neighbourhood” attitude that people may have with an increase of homeless people in the area.
One of the largest risks this shelter is trying to mitigate for unsheltered people is physical trauma caused by the cold such as frostbite.
“For every person we can divert away from the ER with frozen fingers from frostbite, then that’s thousands of dollars we are saving, but the humanity element is more important,” said Maddox.
The province recently announced measures to tackle the homelessness crisis. Housing and Affordability Minister David Hickey said there needs to be more.
“One out-of-the-cold shelter in Fredericton does not solve the 350-person homeless problem. We need more support for those people who need it and it means rolling it out in communities across the province in a systematic and long-term way,” he said.
In a press release about the shelter, the City of Fredericton said that both the provincial and municipal governments will continue to focus on “longer-term supportive housing.”
