Emergency shelters no substitute for housing, Main Street Project director says after fire, scramble to find space for 150 evacuees

The sudden displacement of a Winnipeg emergency shelter has exposed the precariousness of housing in a city where homelessness is rampant and blistering cold overnight can be fatal.

About 150 people staying at the Main Street Project were forced from their beds overnight Wednesday when a fire broke out inside the neighbouring Manwin Hotel, filling the shelter with smoke and steam.

That blaze went on to destroy the vacant hotel, and has left Main Street Project in limbo as it waits for word on when it can return. In the meantime, operations have shifted to a community centre on Isabel Street, slashing shelter capacity and sending other homelessness organizations scrambling to find space.

The situation was frustrating and predictable for Main Street Project’s executive director Jamil Mahmood.

“We were very concerned with the vacant building and what could happen, and then this is a worst-case scenario right now,” said Mahmood.

“We rely too much on emergency shelters to fill our housing gap. Emergency shelters should only be for emergencies, and they’re being used as a housing solution for 700 or 800 people any given night in our city.”

The province ordered the hotel’s residents to leave last winter amid multiple outstanding permit requirements and compliance orders. Since then, wary MSP staff have been checking to ensure the plywood boards securing the building’s entrances remained intact.

Last year, staff reported between 10 to 15 breaches of the building to bylaw enforcement, Mahmood said.

On Tuesday, staff again found the property’s rear door had been “ripped off” and a dumpster was burning, he said.

Staff members noticed the building was on fire shortly before 4 a.m. and phoned emergency services. Fire crews were dispatched to the scene within minutes. People remained inside the shelter until about 5:30 a.m., when the fire forced them to evacuate, Mahmood said.

“We were very concerned with the vacant building and what could happen, and then this is a worst-case scenario right now.”

He arranged an emergency meeting with representatives from the city, province and other homelessness organizations, who worked in concert to open an emergency shelter space at the Freight House Recreation Centre on Isabel Street.

Mahmood said 37 people were taken there by Winnipeg Transit. The Salvation Army, Siloam Mission and N’dinawemak welcomed the remaining evacuees at other nearby shelters.

MSP staff have temporarily shifted operations to the recreation centre, where there is space for about 75 people to sleep, and drop-in space for an additional 25.

Early reports suggested the Main Street Project building sustained limited damage from the flames, but further inspection is needed, Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service Chief Christian Schmidt said in the afternoon.

He said it would likely be at least a few days before operations there could resume.

“Once the fire is out, we will definitely work to get them back into their facility so that they, along with their maintenance teams, can have a closer look,” he said.

The Isabel site will serve temporarily, but an alternative location with more capacity will need to be identified if MSP is unable to return to its home base within a few days, Mahmood said.

“It puts everything in a state of chaos for folks and their kind of cramming into other spaces,” he said. “We know there’s more risk of people being out in the cold or maybe not getting into a space because we’re going to fill up pretty quickly.”

For now, Winnipeg’s various homelessness organizations will continue to triage supplies and shelter spaces as necessary, he said.

“The sector always pulls together,” said Julianne Aitken, executive director at Siloam Mission.

“We talk about everything from, ‘Who has space? Who has staff? Who has food?… There is a process we follow when situations like this happen.”

Like Mahmood, Aitken said the lack of affordable housing in Winnipeg has left emergency shelters to fill the gap. As a result, the people who use those facilities are at heightened risk whenever services are disrupted.

There were seven drug poisonings at Siloam Mission’s shelter Wednesday morning. None of those incidents was fatal, but they highlight how difficult it can be for a shelter to manage an instant influx of people, she said.

“I hope this is a wake-up call for us to realize that housing – permanent housing – is No. 1 because we can’t continue to rely on emergency backup community centres.”

“If most people were housed, then we wouldn’t have hundreds of people (displaced). We would have a handful, and it’s much more manageable to shift people around,” she said.

“Heaven forbid if something were to happen to two shelters… that would just be really wild, especially in winter.”

Point Douglas city councillor Vivian Santos said Winnipeg needs more housing, now.

“I hope this is a wake-up call for us to realize that housing — permanent housing — is No. 1 because we can’t continue to rely on emergency backup community centres,” she said.

What was left of the Manwin Hotel was to be demolished Wednesday, and rubble from the site will be removed soon, Mayor Scott Gillingham said.

He said he hopes the building will be replaced with affordable housing or a similar development, possibly in collaboration with Main Street Project.

Mahmood said he is open to exploring the opportunity.

“It’s probably a little too early to celebrate having that building gone. It’s been a really horrible place for the community. It’s been a place where there has been a ton of murders and harm caused,” he said.

“There have been a lot of people calling for it to come down, so hopefully those that have had tragic experiences there can get a bit of a rest knowing it’s no longer there.”

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca