Social agencies needed more time before province could close shelter, Kinew says

The province pushed back plans to close and renovate an inner-city homeless shelter until next Wednesday to allow for better co-ordination among social agencies, Premier Wab Kinew said Friday.

Sources previously told the Free Press that there wasn’t enough time from Kinew’s March 19 announcement to hit the targeted date for N’Dinawemak at the beginning of this month.

“We just want to make sure that everybody is feeling good about how we’re working together to take people out of tents and moving them into housing,” Kinew said when asked about the delay. “We’re going to keep working with them at 190 (Disraeli).”

Last month, the province said it was working to move nearly 200 residents of N’Dinawemak into housing or relocate them to other shelters, including Main Street Project, Siloam Mission and the Salvation Army.

Frank Parkes, executive director of the shelter, declined to comment Friday, saying only that the transition is still being planned.

Main Street Project also declined to comment Friday. Siloam Mission and the Salvation Army did not respond to requests for comment.

A provincial spokesperson for Housing, Addictions and Homelessness Minister Bernadette Smith said the plan was also delayed due to weather.

“Manitobans know that winter ends on its own timeline,” a spokesperson said. “That’s why, when we’re preparing for the spring thaw and the coming of summer, we always plan for those unexpected snowstorms like we just received (earlier this week). Due to this weather, Siloam Mission has extended the winter overnight shelter and we are helping keep N’Dinawemak‘s overnight drop-in space open a bit longer so that Manitobans experiencing homelessness have a place to stay warm.”

Progressive Conservative MLA Jeff Bereza, the critic for housing, addictions and homelessness, said the delay is the latest example of what he described as poorly planned government announcements.

Bereza likened the postponement at N’Dinawemak to another delay that came to light on Thursday after a memo to staff in the Southern Health region said the opening of a new, long-awaited hospital in Portage la Prairie would be pushed back to 2027 to allow time for staff training and equipment implementation.

Construction of the hospital has been completed; it was previously slated to open in November.

“Should we really be surprised with this government?” he said. “This government continues to make announcements like this and they have no plan in place.”

Bereza said that the province is being unfair to the residents at N’Dinawemak.

“We’re talking about people here,” he said. “This is people’s lives. It’s the up and down of emotions. It’s absolutely unfair, but it’s no surprise from this NDP government.”

Kinew previously announced the shelter — located next to the province’s new 72-hour detox site — would transition into a navigation hub for the homeless. He said closing the 200-bed facility will allow for upgrades, including expanded addiction prevention efforts and additional services.

He outlined two major projects for the site: expanding existing recovery units later this year and converting the facility into a navigation centre.

“This is the natural evolution of a long-term plan to move people who are currently using that facility as a shelter to other locations,” Kinew said of N’Dinawemak, which opened in December 2021.

The province said accommodations had been secured for the 193 people staying at the shelter and, as of the March 19 announcement, just 23 remained. Smith has said groups of residents have been relocating since last summer and has maintained that no shelter spaces are being lost.

A spokesperson reiterated that point Friday when asked why N’Dinawemak needed to remain open for an additional two weeks if there was sufficient capacity elsewhere.

Kinew said Friday they will always make sure they can respond to what they’re seeing on the streets.

“There’s a whole network of sites and providers, and we’re going to continue working with the N’Dinawemak throughout this period, but also on an ongoing basis,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kinew said more than 200 people have been moved out of encampments into housing since January 2025. The province announced its Your Way Home strategy last year with the goal of moving approximately 700 people living in encampments on Winnipeg streets into housing by 2031.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca