ATHABASCA, Alta. — The Athabasca Cares Community Housing Society (ACCHS) has decided to slow down on its plan to develop a downtown building following feedback during a recent town hall meeting and have pulled their development application.
The group said while everyone at the meeting agreed a homeless shelter was needed, the businesses along 50th Street were opposed to having it in their midst, plus there were several requirements placed on the group from the Town of Athabasca to even get the development permit including beautification, fencing, and more.
“One of the major things we heard is that we need to definitely have a shelter that's operational 24/7, especially during the months when it's minus 40,” said ACCHS president Krystal Zahara in an Oct. 25 interview. “So, that caused us to pause and start thinking about how we might be able to come up with a plan that would have a shelter that would be run 24 hours a day, so, we are brainstorming about how we might be able to make this work.”
Not everything coming out of the town hall meeting was negative though; there were offers of building materials, monetary donations, and people.
“We have one new member since the open house, which is great and we've had other people come forward saying that they're interested in volunteering, either in an acute kind of way or joining the board,” said Zahara. "So that's, that's been nice. It's been good for us to have that connection in the community.”
There were the usual concerns about the building including asbestos, longevity, if it suited the needs, as well as safety of those surrounding the building, both during the day and at night.
“We will be connecting with shelters like Barrhead, other rural shelters, to understand … what works best for them, what doesn't work well for them so that we can gather some concrete data and try to understand what the best strategy is going forward,” she said.
The location is a big sticking point for businesses along the north end of 50th Street as well, but the group believes if that is where the problem is now that is where the solution needs to be too.
“All of the homeless individuals are located in the downtown core, the services for them are located in the downtown core aside from Alberta Health,” Zahara said. "Doctor's offices are located downtown. Some of these people actually do need to get groceries and things like that (and) these are all things that are located in the downtown core so, it makes sense for a shelter to be located centrally downtown.”
Zahara said the group is open to moving to a different street but to keep it the most effective the shelter can’t be blocks away from where the low and no shelter residents congregate.
“Selling the building and moving to a different location isn't something that is off the table for us,” she said. “But with a huge disclaimer that we understand that there is a lot of unknowns with what the property value is. Is there a resale value for that building? So, there's a lot of unknowns right now.”
Ideally, the group would like to get the building fixed up regardless of whether they use it or sell it. Taking it from looking derelict to safe would help both the neighbouring businesses and ACCHS.
Another concern brought up was what some considered to be a lack of a budget or plan, but when you’re dealing with humans, the variables are considerable.
“Everything with this project depends on something else; there's steppingstones all the way through this entire process,” said Zahara. “All of these ideas are dependent on us having money and in order to apply for money, you have to have ideas. You can't just reach out to the government asking for money and not have some kind of budget or some kind of plan or idea of what operations might be.”
Zahara acknowledged it’s fine to ask the questions, but ACCHS is non-profit, not a business.
“We also want it to be known this is very fluid; non-profits are very fluid,” she said. “There is no concrete plan because everything is dependent on something else. It's dependent on the government that we have in place; it's dependent on appeals; it's dependent on all these things that make it possible for you to have a concrete business plan in place.”
The bottom line is there will not be a homeless shelter this winter in Athabasca.
“Unfortunately, we know that the shelter isn't going to happen this winter; we know that that building isn't going to be operational this winter and to tell you the truth, I'm so disheartened that we can't offer the services,” she said. "I've had individuals calling me who are unhoused saying, ‘Hey, where are we gonna stay now?’ I have nothing to offer them.”
The test though, is being able to be adaptable, Zahara said.
“We're planning what our next steps are going to be and this isn't going to fizzle away,” she said. “We're going to continue to do our due diligence, we're going to continue to work on getting a shelter established in Athabasca. This is a roadblock, and we reach roadblocks all the time and one thing that makes a society successful is the ability to pivot and be fluid.”
The society will continue fundraising with different things coming up as well as through fundrazer.com, a crowdfunding website, and is accepting e-transfers to [email protected]. That is also the e-mail address if you want to volunteer or have further feedback for the group.
In the meantime, they will continue to provide backpacks filled with cold-weather gear, toiletries, and other necessities to unsheltered people in the area, she said.
