Bryony House searching for temporary home until new shelter is ready

The executive director of Bryony House says the search for a new temporary shelter is going "really well" after post-tropical storm Dorian made its current location uninhabitable.

The 24-bed Halifax shelter, which provides emergency housing for women and children fleeing abusive situations, closed its doors in September after the storm.

But even before the natural disaster hit, Maria MacIntosh said the building was having ongoing issues with plumbing and flooding.

"It's a shelter that was built in 1882 and it's certainly showing its age," she said.

Since 2016, Bryony House has received a total of $5.2 million in grants from the provincial and federal governments, and will soon be going to tender for a new shelter.

MacIntosh estimates it could take up to two years to build, so they're looking for a temporary space to provide emergency shelter to women in the meantime.

"We were looking for that as soon as possible where we can offer consistent, safe service delivery," she said.

Services still available

MacIntosh said the shelter is still offering services to help women who need emergency shelter, and anyone who needs help can call Bryony House's 24-hour distress line.

She said staff would figure out what the situation is, do safety planning with the caller and bring her into the location they're currently working out of.

"We would do the same sort of intake process that we would have done if we brought someone into the shelter," said MacIntosh.

She said they have resources to place women at a different location for a period of time until they can be moved to a sister shelter, or to work with the Department of Community Services to find other housing options.

"We don't want women to come away thinking they can't call us," said MacIntosh.

Union questions plan

But the union representing 23 employees at Bryony House says not enough is being done to help women in need while the shelter has been closed.

Colleen Coffey, Atlantic regional executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said she introduced an emergency resolution at a Nova Scotia Federation of Labour convention Tuesday night to keep Bryony House open.

"For me, [it] was about having the Federation of Labour and all their affiliates support us in having a house open," she said.

Coffey said the other emergency shelters in Halifax have limited resources, and she's concerned about women being sent to shelters outside of the city where they might not be able to keep their jobs or go to school.

While she knows the current building is uninhabitable, Coffey said staff believe the board at Bryony House hasn't moved quickly enough to find a temporary emergency shelter.

"I know that there was a woman in Halifax last week that spent a night sleeping outdoors because there was no place to go," she said. "For me, this is very, very serious."

MacIntosh said the shelter hasn't been turning people away.

"I'm certainly not in a position to talk about a specific situation, but our practice has been that we have a number of opportunities and options for women, and we do get them to safety when they call us," she said.

Lots of considerations

After Dorian, MacIntosh said the board of directors looked at a number of options and decided the safest and most responsible one was to close the current shelter and look for a temporary one until the new building is constructed.

While they have experts on hand to help, she said the search is taking some time.

"We have to consider a number of things: how many rooms can we have, how many people can we house, we'll have to do an occupational health and safety review of any sites," she said.

MacIntosh said Bryony House is looking at options and hopes to settle on a new location soon.

"We're pretty excited and we're very hopeful that we'll be able to do this in a short amount of time, and to get back to doing the great work that we do," she said.

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