It’s been a busy week for Tom Greening, executive director for Home Base Housing.
They’ve relocated the organization’s emergency shelter into a retirement home that had closed in the east end of Kingston.
Located on Montreal Street, the In From The Cold Emergency Shelter has multiple bunk beds in the same room. That means physical distancing just wasn’t possible — and it created a real concern if anyone in the vulnerable homeless population were to catch COVID-19.
The former Fairfield Manor East on Maclean Court is ideal alternate location, says Greening.
“We have 40 individual rooms, all with their own self-contained washrooms,” he explained, adding they have about 34 of the rooms ready for occupancy.
“There are currently 21 people here at the In From The Cold Shelter.” Greening told Global Kingston. “We had two new intakes just today and I’ve just been told there are two new intakes on their way to the shelter as we speak.”
The remainder of Home Base Housing’s services continue from their Montreal Street location.
“The housing help centre services and our housing first case management services as well as our street outreach services are based out of 540 Montreal Street,” Greening said, saying staff have also been redeployed to increase street outreach services.
“We now have six full-time staff working every day in the downtown core and all over the city,” he said.
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Greening says the teams also supply their homeless clients with day-to-day essentials and information about the shelter relocation. “Food, water, blankets, sleeping bags and we’re also giving them information and assistance to get into shelter if that’s what they desire,” he said.
Addiction Mental Health Services for Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, meanwhile, opened the Kingston Social Isolation Centre.
The organization says they don’t want the facility’s location publicly identified, but say individuals in that building are only there by referral.
An e-mail, the organization’s supervisor, Karen Berti, states those referrals only come the emergency department or the Kingston assessment centre that tests for COVID-19. The centre opened on March 30 and accepted its first referral that afternoon.
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The isolation centre, Berti wrote, is for “individuals experiencing homelessness who may have COVID-19 or who have symptoms and are awaiting test results.”
Berti’s e-mail also claims the building is staffed around the clock and can currently support five people.
Over the next week, capacity will increase to 15 individuals and can support up to 32 people if needed, Berti added, saying individuals at the centre will also have access to mental health services.
As well, they will have “access to nurses, a physician, a psychiatrist, staff trained in mental health and addictions and a program manager,” Berti wrote.
Two Kingston police officers are also on site to support security, according to Berti’s e-mail.
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