Old Brewery Mission hopes to move its services to Hôtel-Dieu Hospital

MONTREAL – The Old Brewery Mission, an organization that has been helping underprivileged Montrealers for over a century, is planning to take the next step in their fight to end homelessness.

The Mission is hoping to move its services to Hôtel-Dieu Hospital once its patients are transferred to CHUM.

The 125-year-old organization announced in September that it plans to shift its focus from just providing shelter to permanently helping the homeless get off the street.

“The shelter is one of the smallest things we do now,” said Matthew Pearce, The Old Brewery Mission’s CEO.

“We’re much more involved in transition programming, in adapted healthcare and in housing.”

The Hôtel-Dieu facility would also be turned into a supportive living complex for seniors, lower income families and students.

The 156 emergency beds being turned into transition beds.

The Mission hopes to also equip the building with a daycare, a library, community gardens and more.

“They’re going to need an environment that is more like a group home, a supported living kind of environment.”

Pearce says Mayor Denis Coderre is already on board with the project.

“He was inspired by the idea,” said Pearce. “He supports this idea. He thinks it has merit.”

This is the Old Brewery Mission’s first step to solving a larger problem that plagues the country.

Though Statistics Canada does not keep data on the number of homeless persons in Canada, it does record the number of people who stay in shelters.

According to the organization’s latest information, more than 20,000 people took refuge in homeless shelters across the country in 2011.

The majority, almost 13,000, were men.

Another 7,400 were women and more than 2,000 were children under the age of 15.

In Montreal, the Old Brewery Mission calculates around 4,000 people use their services every year.

That’s roughly one-fifth of all of the people who stay in shelters nation wide.

“It’s not good enough to do good work,” said Pearce.

“You have to do good work that transforms.”

The Hôtel-Dieu Hospital is worth $41 million.