The Flin Flon Aboriginal Friendship Centre is hoping to move forward with a massive housing plan that will, if built, bring both a supportive housing complex and an emergency shelter uptown.
The project has been named Keekih - the Cree word for “my house” or “my home” - according to the project brief. The project has been discussed by the centre for years, but major strides have been taken in the last year.
“We’re taking the lead, from a community-based committee, to address homeless and housing. This is where we’re at,” said friendship centre executive director Shelly Craig, one of the lead organizers of the project.
The project includes three phases, one of which has already taken place. First was a concerted change by the centre to switch up its on-site hostel, located upstairs, from short-term stays to longer-term residency, a transitional housing model. The stays will still temporary, but people stay longer and have access to supports like mental health and health care, training, education or addictions support if needed.
“We repurposed our hostel upstairs to transitional housing. The reason why we did that is that the need was going from short term to long term. The short term was always prenatals and medical services, but we don’t have prenatal here anymore, so we needed to do something,” said Craig.
The hostel is a roof over people’s heads when needed, but it has limits. For instance, the doors of the hostel currently lock at 5 p.m. every evening and don’t open again until 8 a.m. and visitors aren’t allowed upstairs, a remnant of the centre’s COVID-19 policy. The hostel has a shared bathroom and people staying there can’t cook in the building.
“It’s working with folks who are moving to safe, long term housing, but it’s not ideal, because you’re not independent - you can’t cook or have your own washroom or anything like that - but it works. It means you can work toward housing stability, learning new norms,” Craig said.
Supportive housing
That will be different with the second part of the project - the most ambitious and largest part. A 16-unit supportive housing complex would be built, just south of the centre’s current location, over the existing location of the Church Street parking lot. The complex will see less supervision than the hostel and would be geared more toward getting people prepared for the day-to-day work that comes with finding long-term housing. Residents will have more freedom to come and go as they please, to cook their own meals and have more privacy.
The project will see studio and one-bedroom apartments within a two-story building that may include in-house work training, health supports and counselling if residents so need. A meeting room will be on the first floor, according to blueprints - the centre has worked with an intern architect to produce a full building plan.
“At that stage, people are really working toward housing stability - let’s get those employment skills, help with a resume and getting skills,” said Craig.
“We have an Elder - we have folks here who will help you get an ID, settlement claims, even CPP or a status card, all that type of stuff. We have a housing coordinator for support services and that will be crucial - folks will have to do an intake so we know where they’re at.”
The centre received approval from the City of Flin Flon back in February to pursue the project on the land, with a deal in place to cover the land’s value over five years and committing to take out building permits, among other conditions. Craig said the centre has also submitted a request for proposals to the provincial government for social housing, which is due in December.
Shelter plan
The third and final part would include a second brand-new building, this time located at the corner of Main Street and North Avenue - this would be used as an emergency shelter that can be used not only for cold weather, but during heatwaves, smoky conditions or other times of need.
The centre is currently seeking approval from the City to use the site for a shelter - council members gave a first reading to the idea during a recent meeting. That plan will see a second building, smaller than the apartment complex, which will be used as a shelter space, with up to 20 spaces for people in need of a place to stay, along with office, counselling, laundry, shower and bathroom space. The setup will be similar to the centre’s existing cold weather shelter, where it opens up the lobby on cold nights, but larger, open more often and with more access and resources.
“This is really focusing on folks’ day-to-day needs. Our vision is having a shelter by night and support services and a place to go during the day,” said Craig.
The centre has been pursuing a project like this for almost the past decade, first conducting research into Flin Flon’s homeless community with the Univ. of Winnipeg back in the mid-2010s.
“We started looking at homelessness in our community - we did a research project that provided evidence. We started noticing a change in need, an increase in need for suitable housing, a place to go,” said Craig.
“We were able to access some funds to start helping people access housing and we wanted to a community approach - engage people to really define what the needs are and possible solutions.”
That helped inspire the creation of the Everyone Deserves a Home committee, a local group consisting of housing advocates, health workers, law enforcement and others, tasked with helping people in need of a place to live.
Cost
All told, the project is expected to cost around $6.3 million just for the supportive housing complex, with further cost expected for the shelter building. The centre will need to cover a substantial amount of that cost, but is looking for outside funding from several sources, including the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), the Green Municipal Fund from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and from the federal government through Infrastructure Canada’s Reaching Home homelessness strategy among others.
The centre will still need to take out mortgages on the buildings to help pay down the project and they will need to fit within energy efficiency standards - both to keep operating costs down and to maximize available grant funding to cover costs.
“It’s not a small project,” said Craig.
“It is a huge undertaking. It’s not going to happen overnight, but we’re doing the best that we can. I’m excited about it. I’ve been here a long time and I know it’s a slow dig.”
