St. Matthews Church may leave Out of the Cold program
St. Matthews Lutheran Church in Kitchener is no longer offering overnight stays for those using the church on Wednesday nights as part of the Out of the Cold program, and is reconsidering participating in Out of the Cold at all.
St. Matthews is the latest group to pull back from the Out of the Cold program, which offers shelter and warm meals to the region's homeless population through the winter months.
Since August, five other locations have withdrawn completely from Out of the Cold, citing safety concerns for volunteers or a lack of space and inability to meet demand.
The church will open at 5 p.m. on Wednesday nights and start serving hot meals starting at 5:30 p.m., staying open until 10 p.m. St. Matthews will re-open at 6:45 a.m. on Thursday morning and serve breakfast from 7-8 a.m.
The trial period with the new operation times will start on Nov. 5 and run one month.
According to a release from St. Matthews on Wednesday, the church is ending overnight stays "in order to support efforts of the Region to meet the needs of the homeless and to use the time to evaluate the nature of their future involvement in the OOTC program."
In September, Waterloo Regional Police said crystal meth use has grown and is challenging volunteers who aren't trained to deal with withdrawal symptoms in clients.
"We thought we'd seen it all with crack in the '90s and then crystal meth comes along and it seems to be literally tenfold," said Kevin Thaler, the superintendent of neighbourhood policing with the Waterloo Regional Police on The Morning Edition. "In the middle of the night when people go through withdrawal they get unusual behaviours. This is stuff even the volunteers haven't seen in the past 15 years."
The Region of Waterloo says more than 500 people use Out of the Cold, and that it can provide spaces for people if Out of the Cold can't.