Wesley Urban Ministries to close drop-in day centre in 2023

Wesley Urban Ministries, a Hamilton non-profit that works with people experiencing homelessness, announced this week that it is closing its Catharine Street North day centre on March 31, 2023. 

"We will be refocusing our resources from emergency response to address the root causes of homelessness," executive director of Wesley Urban Ministries, Don Seymour, said in a press release issued Wednesday.

The Catharine Street North day centre offers people experiencing homelessness basic necessities, like food, water, washrooms, showers and harm-reduction services. 

Seymour told CBC Hamilton that while the centre will close in March, the ministry will still provide the same services to the community. 

"We will still be continuing to provide food to people on the street, as we always have been," Seymour said, adding that without a physical location, they will focus more on delivering their services directly into the community. 

"If people want us to walk with them to where they are, where they will get service, we are prepared to do that."

Controversy around the day centre's location 

The day centre opened in March, 2020, across the street from John Rebecca Park. The park, which itself opened in 2019 and was previously a parking lot, has been home to people sleeping in tents. People often congregate at the site and items such as bicycles, clothing, tarps and food wrappers have at times been left on the ground. 

Club 77 manager and neighbour Paul McDonald told CBC Hamilton in July that the encampment caused an increase in crime in the neighbourhood and threatened the safety of his patrons, from patrons leaving at night getting in fights with encampment residents, to residents entering the bar during off hours. 

However, before the park opened, there were reports of violence related to Club 77 itself. 

McDonald said he does not blame the day centre for the issues he has had with park residents.

But some nearby residents, according to Seymour, have expressed concern with the day centre. He says has received "hostile" emails from some community members who wanted the day centre to leave the neighbourhood entirely. 

He told CBC Hamilton Thursday that kind of feedback is not the reason behind the decision to close. Wesley Urban Ministries is turning its attention toward finding permanent housing for people, instead of providing them basic services while they remain living outdoors, he said. 

"We have had a long internal conversation and decided that we'd like to focus on the root causes of poverty," Seymour said. 

'Where will people go?'

Tim O'Shea, a Hamilton physician who works with people experiencing homelessness, previously told CBC Hamilton the interests of the housed community are often pitted against the interests of the unhoused, and that the solution is to get people off of the streets. 

"The issue isn't necessarily one group versus the other, but the issue is that there's not safe, stable, affordable places for people in encampments to live," he said.

Olivia Mancini, co-founder of the Student Overdose Prevention and Education Network in Hamilton and a registered social worker, said the closure of the Wesley centre will leave a gap in service. 

"More closures and cuts to essential services for people deprived of housing," she wrote on Twitter. "As of March 2023 there will be no drop in day service for men until 5pm in the entire City of Hamilton. Where will people go?"

Next steps for Wesley

Seymour says Wesley Urban Ministries is still working on for the specifics for their next steps. 

"We've seen the increase in people who are homeless and the increase in the complexity of their needs," he said. "A lot of times we will house people... right from the street and they fail most of the time because they're not ready," he said. 

Seymour said that when people are taken from living outdoors in an urban area and put into housing, they are often still in a survivor's mentality. 

"That mentality means they're only looking for their next meal or they're a place to sleep or if they have an addiction issue, their next fix," he said. 

He said that part of what Wesley's new strategy will be to offer pre-support for people entering supportive housing, and acclimate them better for success.

He said one of the solutions they are considering is housing people in tiny shelters, while they work toward more permanent housing.

Tom Cooper, director of Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction and communications lead for the Hamilton Alliance for Tiny Shelters, agreed tiny shelters are a short-term solution for a problem that has been a long-time coming. 

"Senior levels of government simply haven't built enough affordable housing over the last 20 or 30 years. And now, you know, those policy decisions are coming home to roost," he said.