Friendship Centre to open shelter on 12th St.

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This article was published 04/05/2024 (867 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The path has been cleared for the Brandon Friendship Centre to open a new shelter on 12th Street after the Brandon Planning Commission issued a zoning variance and one-year conditional use permit on Wednesday.

The residence at 450 12th St. will be used to create a youth lodge through the centre’s Gakina Abinoojiiyag Program (GAP) which will feature a hostel and shelter, transitional housing and a 24-hour safe space for people aged 16 to 26 years old.

On Friday, lodge co-ordinator Richard Greer and GAP youth outreach co-ordinator Lisa Noctor showed the Sun around the facility, which they said will receive about $5 million in funding over the next five years from a federal crime prevention program.

“We have been working on this project for almost three years,” Noctor said.

“We started with our initial proposal through the federal crime prevention fund and then it took about a year for that to come back and for us to hear back. Then it was another full year of development. Once we had all of the operational funding secure and in place, we got to work and here we are now.”

Noctor said the youth facility is part of a series of lodges the centre is establishing. The first was Project Hope, an apartment building for young men also on 12th Street.

Depending on the success of the youth lodge and the needs of the community, other lodges might be opened in other neighbourhoods.

“Brandon has never had a 24-hour safe space specifically for youth, and we are very urgently in need of one,” Noctor said, adding that the combination of all three services is a new concept in the country.

She said services like the BNRC’s Blue Door Project and Samaritan House Ministries are welcoming to people of all ages, but in order to disrupt “cycles of entrenchment” that lead young people to chronic homelessness, they need separate spaces.

“It’s really important when we’re trying to support young people — and in particular, women — that we have a space where they can come together without fear of recruitment into gang lifestyles, without fear of recruitment into sexual exploitation and trafficking, without fear of harm,” Noctor said.

“That’s not to say the safe and warm shelter is not a safe space, but we do recognize and respond to young people telling us that it doesn’t feel like a safe space for them.”

Because 90 per cent of people in most social service settings are Indigenous, Noctor said, that separate space also needs to be decolonized or Indigenized.

A lot of times, decolonization means changing the language used when helping people, Greer said. Programs will sometimes ask what is wrong with someone, but the lodge program will ask what’s wrong with the situation they’ve found themselves in.

By doing so, Noctor said it can help lift the blame and shame someone feels, but also help identify the barriers they’re running into.

Greer said the lodge will use the medicine wheel as a grounding tool to look at each individual from a physical, spiritual, environmental and holistic perspective.

Despite being run by the Friendship Centre and focusing on Indigenous teachings, Greer said the lodge will be open to people of all ethnicities.

However, before people can be welcomed into the centre, some renovations must be done first. The hope is that it will open before the snow falls next winter, with the transitional housing units to be opened first.

Eventually, Greer said, they hope to welcome youth younger than 16 into the safe space, but there are additional legal challenges that need to be worked out before that can happen.

Greer said he expects somewhere in the neighbourhood of 20 staff to run the facility once it’s operational.

The second floor toward the rear of the building will eventually house six cots at night for the lodge’s shelter, the living room will be used as the safe space and the three bedrooms toward the front of the building will be used as transitional housing units.

During the day, the cots in the shelter space will be folded up and placed in a closet so that area can be used for programming. The kitchen next to the living room will be used to make meals for those staying at the lodge and for those in the transitional housing units to make their own.

According to the draft minutes of the planning commission meeting, the city’s director of planning and buildings, Ryan Nickel, said he received five letters in favour of the shelter and five in opposition.

The draft minutes, which can still be modified and corrected before being approved at the next meeting, listed 12 speakers in favour of the project and nine in opposition.

Those in favour of the project are said to have supported the creation of a needed facility for the city’s youth to receive food and shelter.

Some speakers were listed in the minutes as expressing support for the hostel and shelter aspect, but opposition to the 24-hour safe place.

Others expressed concern that the property in question was too small for its intended number of occupants, while a pair of speakers also said they were worried that the addition of the shelter would have a negative effect on crime in the area.

According to Greer, welcoming six people into the shelter is the target, but ultimately the occupancy of the building will be determined by fire and safety regulations.

He said the concerns expressed by those who spoke against the proposal are real to those people and he respects and understands them.

While Greer acknowledged that the neighbourhood has had some issues in the past, he also said that by giving young people a space to get out of a difficult environment and off the street, it will contribute to improving that environment.

The lodge, he said, will be treated as a respected and revered space and its importance will be made clear to those who use it.

Occasionally there might be people who have to be asked to leave the lodge because they’re promoting an unsafe atmosphere for either themselves or others. However, Greer said staff will try to de-escalate first and if they cannot, the individual will be asked to leave with a packed lunch and a suggestion that they return to apologize in a day or two.

He said in his experience working at the centre and with Brandon Bear Clan, he has found that when you treat people with love and respect, they treat you the same way.

Another aspect Greer said might get overlooked is the economic one.

“This is a $5-million project and all of that money will be going back into Brandon through wages, buying food, paying for repairs for our space, buying gas for our vehicles,” he said.

“All those dollars are being driven back into our economy. So not only is it good for our people and for those people that are struggling, but it’s also good for our community from an economic perspective.”

With the conditional use approval only in effect for one year, Greer said it gives the lodge an opportunity to provide young people with a service they need and prove to those with reservations that it is truly a good thing.

“It’s a beautiful compromise,” he said.

Those with questions about the lodge can call the friendship centre at 204-727-1407 and ask for Greer.

A formal name for the lodge will eventually be granted in a ceremony.

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