More information needed on shelter

Re: Wolfe Street plan requires more clarity, more details, more rules, May 31

The Wolfe Street plan for modular housing units requires more clarity and details from your newspaper. In articles I have read on the subject in The Examiner, the fate of the current overnight overflow shelter is unclear or contradictory.

At times, it is to be repurposed to an overnight drop-in with meal as a replacement for the One Roof Community Centre at St. John’s, which informed the city that it will not extend its contract at year’s end. And it will be renovated for additional storage space, showers, and meeting room(s) for agency staff to meet with modular home residents.

The overflow shelter already has a shower room. Is another being added? One of the greatest needs of the shelter is laundry facilities. Are these being added?

One of the councillors leading the plan has stated that the overflow shelter will continue to operate giving “tenters” and the homeless unable to be accommodated in the main shelters due to capacity limits a choice: use the overflow shelter overnight or stay in one of the modular housing units.

If this is the case, its hard to imagine a drop-in program with meal operating in the same building at the same time as the shelter. Indeed, the word around the One Roof Community Centre at St. John’s is that it won’t be relocating to Wolfe Street, and another location, to operate the program during the day, is being sought.

Rob Bartlett, Peterborough