After 128 years of service, the Old Brewery Mission in Montreal is changing its approach and is moving away from offering a shelter service for homeless people.
Instead, the mission is now offering a more transitional system aimed at stopping homeless people from remaining homeless.
Those in need will work with a counsellor to come up with an individualized plan and to establish goals.
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In addition, individuals will get help with acquiring any necessary identity cards and any revenue they are eligible for. The mission will also help people find affordable housing.
“The whole idea is to develop a plan to move them out of the situation they’re in,” Matthew Pearce, president and CEO of Old Brewery Mission, said.
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Pearce said a typical shelter service would be a bed for the night, a dinner, a shower and breakfast in the morning.
The individual would then need to be out of the building during the day.
Pearce said that routine can be a problem because people become comfortable with being homeless.
“We’re enabling people to stabilize in homelessness,” Pearce said. “It allows people who have no other options to develop homelessness as a lifestyle, to become chronic shelter users.”
Pearce said the new system can benefit Montreal, as less people will be living on the streets.
“A lot more will be inside working with us during the day,” Pearce said. “They’ll become more proactive people, rather than people drifting around the streets of Montreal.”
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The mission will accommodate 80 people in their new system.
Pearce hopes this new model can influence other shelters to take the same approach.
“Our objective is, of course, to end chronic homelessness,” Pearce said. “We want to end homelessness as a lifestyle.”
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