Emergency shelter operating at capacity week after opening

The Fredericton emergency out-of-the-cold shelter has only been open for a week and has already been at capacity for the past few nights.

Organizers say it's filling a need.

"Folks who are coming in are incredibly grateful and just really moved … in terms of the warmth of this place," said Faith McFarland, community development co-ordinator for the Community Action Group on Homelessness.

For the past few nights, all 20 beds at the shelter have been full. Several of those guests have been women.

The number is in line with the demographics for the people sleeping rough in the city that the group collected last March. Still it's a number McFarland said she found surprising.

'Hard reality'

"Somehow I still found it really striking and it's a hard reality," she said.

Those running the shelter have been working closely with the emergency shelter that recently opened at St. Mary's First Nation. If there is the need, the shelters will share space.

Warren Maddox, executive director of Fredericton Homeless Shelters, said the new downtown shelter, along with the shelter at St Mary's, has relieved pressure on the shelters he runs.

"It gives us a nice pressure valve so that we have an option when we're at capacity, that we've got a place where we can send people, which was always a little trickier before," he said.

Maddox said the new shelters, which sleep about 40 people between them, fill a necessary gap in services.

More to be done

But, in many ways, the work is just beginning.

"We're kind of back to where we were in the 80s when you opened up a temporary solution like a shelter," McFarland said.

"There's just a lot of work that needs to be done in investing in housing infrastructure and support services can't be underestimated."

The decision on whether the downtown shelter will continue to operate until March will be made at a municipal committee meeting on Wednesday.