Shelter braces for winter influx

Samaritan House Ministries in Brandon is preparing to turn people away again this season, as the temperature drops and the number of shelter beds falls short of the expected need.

The organization says the 41 beds at its Safe and Warm Shelter aren’t enough to support the city’s growing homeless population.

It’s a hard thing to turn people away, especially on the coldest nights of the year, said executive director Heather Symbalisty.

“We know that we will fill up this winter, unfortunately, and we are going to be referring anybody that we don’t have capacity to accommodate,” Symbalisty said on Friday.

Referrals will go to places like the recently reopened Life’s Journey drop-in centre, which is “extremely important,” although it does not provide beds for overnight stays, Symbalisty said.

The need for those resources, she added, “as everyone knows, is rising in the community.”

Samaritan House hasn’t had to turn away people yet this season, but as temperatures drop, it’s only a matter of time, she said.

There were 211 people living without a home in the city as of October 2024, according to the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation.

Symbalisty said Samaritan House is preparing for an influx of more people this year, as the average person’s wallet becomes thinner.

“People are looking at their budgets and trying to pay their rent and decide what bills that they’re going to pay,” she said. “We think that we will see more (people) and the winter will be quite busy for us.”

Between January and September, the organization handed out just over 14,000 food hampers, about 6,000 more than the same time the year before.

Over at the Helping Hands soup kitchen, the number of extra meals being plated is also going up.

The Seventh Street organization has seen a 12 to 15 per cent increase in usage over the last year, executive director Angela Braun said Tuesday. It is projected to give out about 52,000 meals this year, compared to 46,000 in 2024.

“We’re seeing a lot of new faces, a lot of different faces than we wouldn’t regularly see. A lot more seniors lately,” Braun said.

Those new faces are from demographics that haven’t accessed the soup kitchen in the past either, she said.

“We cater to just about anybody within Brandon. Our services are more designed towards a vulnerable population, but we have everything from seniors that their pension isn’t enough, to unhoused students, new families, families that are new to the country — just about everybody,” Braun said.

“With the rising cost of food and rent and gas and everything else in the world … it makes it hard for everybody to make ends meet.”

Braun said it’s “bittersweet” that she, her co-workers and the many crucial volunteers at Helping Hands get to serve more people.

“It’s nice to be able to give people a place to come sit down and enjoy time with their friends or share a meal with their friends or family when they can’t do it at home or don’t have a home,” she said.

“But it’s also heartbreaking that we are seeing an increase and more people coming in and more people struggling.”

Helping Hands has seen an increase in donations from the public, but is still looking for provincial and federal aid to help alleviate the pressures of more people walking through their doors.

Politicians say they are doing what they can to fight for Westman.

“Food banks like Samaritan House and Helping Hands are stretched to the limit,” Brandon-Souris Conservative MP Grant Jackson said in a news release Monday.

Jackson said he is “raising the alarm” over the “growing food insecurity crisis gripping Westman” and communities around the country.

“Brandon-Souris is full of generous, community-minded people who always step up in times of need,” said Jackson, who called on the governing Liberals to support Conservative motions designed to alleviate the strain facing communities.

Manitoba Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith, who wasn’t available for an interview but sent a statement, said the province is continuing to fund shelter beds, warming shelter space and housing first teams.

“Our government is working towards ending chronic homelessness in Manitoba, and that includes making long and short-term investments,” she said, adding the former Progressive Conservative government let housing fall into disrepair.

Part of the work the NDP government has done in Brandon, she said, was giving $500,000 for Franny’s Place, a 24-7 safe space for Indigenous women, and another $500,000 for the Spruce Woods Housing Co-op, both of which were announced in the past year.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the city is doing what it can to fix the pressures due to lack of housing in the city.

“We constantly are in discussions with all the groups, as well as with the province,” Fawcett said on Monday. “We continuously work with the province to see if we can maybe get a few more beds. But I think what we need to get is some housing.”

Fawcett said affordable and low-income housing are crucial to help people get out of poverty.

“We need housing for people that can’t afford any, and it doesn’t have to be big, fancy places. It just needs to be a place that you can kind of get away with, get away into, and that it’s your own and you take care of it,” the mayor said.

Fawcett said housing is a responsibility of the provincial government, and the city is limited in what it can do. It currently has an affordable housing incentive and other programs for tax purposes designed to lower the burden for people in need.

Recently, the province has helped the city on the housing front, he said. That includes support for transitional housing, Franny’s Place the housing co-op.

Organizations like Helping Hands and Samaritan House are “essential,” Fawcett said, adding it’s fortunate Brandon has these resources in place, even if they aren’t enough to satisfy the city’s current needs.

Another organization, the Community Wellness Collaborative, advocates for the city’s vulnerable population. Antoinette Gravel-Ouellette, the co-chair of CWC, said the work it does is vital to help the community.

The collaborative meets regularly with Brandon organizations and local leaders like Fawcett and the city’s MLAs to give stakeholders a central voice.

“As community, we need to work together for the solutions,” Gravel-Ouellette said. “So instead of working in silos, that’s one of the things that CWC does — is bring together all of those voices so that we can work together, because the solution is within all of the voices.”

She said the city as a whole is “on a good trajectory” for supporting the homeless and people who are at a tipping point, but “there’s tons of work that needs to be done.”

Most of that progress has been because the organizations in the city are doing a better job at being vocal about what they need, she said.

While Samaritan House is prepared to turn people away again this year, it doesn’t make it any easier after doing the same last year.

“That’s why it’s important for us to find solutions, even if they’re temporary solutions for those extremely cold nights of minus 35 to minus 41 where we know that if someone stays out in (those) conditions, that it is a life-or-death situation,” Symbalisty said.

Currently, 25 of the 41 beds the shelter operates are funded by the province, for which Symbalisty is thankful. If it weren’t for that funding, they might have to turn more people away, she said.

“No one wants to see anyone harmed. It is heartbreaking for the staff to have to make those decisions and turn anybody away because they don’t want to see anyone or hear the news of someone being hurt.”

Symbalisty said she’s open to solutions from anyone, and is open to any kind of collaboration that can help the city’s most in need.

The Sun reached out to Life’s Journey, the Community Health and Housing Association, and the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation for comment, but didn’t receive a response by press time.

» alambert@brandonsun.com