Appeals board approves emergency homeless shelter

An emergency winter shelter for the homeless will open in Calgary's Crescent Heights neighbourhood with extra security meant to ease the concerns of residents.

Following a five-hour hearing, a city committee Thursday night gave the Mustard Seed the go-ahead to run the shelter out of the old Brick furniture store at 16th Avenue and Centre Street in the northeast.

However, members of the Subdivision Development and Appeals Board required the shelter have extra lighting, additional security cameras, and door alarms to alert staff of anyone leaving the facility.

During the hearing, board members heard from residents worried about vandalism, loitering, and encounters with street people in their neighbourhoods.

Floyd Perras, the Mustard Seed's senior operations officer, said concerns about safety and security have been taken seriously.

"And we did everything we could to hear their concerns and make sure that we're going to be a good neighbour to them."

Organizations that work with the homeless say there aren't enough shelter beds in Calgary because of the number of people flooding into the city to look for work.

During a cold snap last week, the grandstand building on Calgary's Stampede grounds became a temporary emergency warming shelter for up to 300 homeless people because all the regular shelters were full.

Residents voice concerns

During the hearing, Felix Chang told the board members area residents should be entitled to feel safe.

"Please give us a chance to feel safe in our community, OK?" he said.

Deborah Melnick, a police officer who lives in the area, says the city appears to be rushing the project.

"And if it's not Crescent Heights this time, it'll be another community next time until there's some real long-term planning done to deal with this issue."

Dottie Laithwaite told the board that in the five years she's lived next to a homeless shelter in the community of Hillhurst, she's never had a problem.

"To start off with, we were worried," she said. "We have had no problems. We never even see it. We wouldn't even know there was a shelter there."

The new temporary shelter will house 300 people and is expected to be operational by the end of next week. It will operate until the end of March, then be torn down to make way for a widening of 16th Avenue.