Strathmore will open its first temporary overnight shelter in the coming weeks, after months of effort by Elizabeth Karp and her partners in the southern Alberta community.
The shelter will be located in the top floor of the Harvest Healing Centre Church. Karp said it will initially accommodate up to 10 people, who may otherwise not have a place to stay for the night.
“There is homelessness here,” Karp said.
“When everything went down with the economy, people lost their jobs, people lost their homes.”
The doors of the shelter will typically open in the evening and close during the day. Karp hopes the shelter serves as a springboard for people who need help in securing necessities like housing and employment.
“What we want to do is gather the great resources that Strathmore and area offer so that we can direct these people into the different places for where their needs are,” Karp.
“A lot of people that come in aren’t aware of what’s out there for them.”
Karp said the shelter has been a community-wide effort that received support from a number of sources, including the town’s council. It allocated around $60,000 towards the shelter, according to councillor Denise Peterson.
“When you have a group that comes to you and says, ‘We have capacity to do this, we have passion to do it,’ I think it’s incumbent on the municipality to do whatever they can to support that,” Peterson said.
“Compassionate people, who saw a need to fill an enormous gap, have stepped up to do it.”
Karp said she receives between one and six phone calls a day from agencies looking to house people for the evening. Once her doors are open she said her goal is to not only provide those people with a safe nights rest, but also make a lasting change.
“Sometimes life gets us down and it gets difficult to see light at the end of the tunnel and I want to be able to offer that light,” Karp said.
“They deserve respect, like every other human being.”
Comments