West End refuge for asylum-seekers launched with private funds

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/10/2017 (2931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Steve Heinrichs and his family have been watching people come and go from the West End building near their home at all hours for the last three years. On Sunday, they got a chance to peek at what’s been going on inside.

The former appliance repair shop on Ellice Avenue has been gutted and transformed into transitional housing for asylum-seekers who need a place to stay and a guiding hand during their first six months in Canada. Naomi House will be good for the community, said Heinrichs, a dad with three children ages 12 and under.

“We’re here to celebrate,” he said on Sunday while touring the 6,200-square-foot building that has seven bedrooms and will house an estimated 30 refugee claimants a year.

A private foundation purchased the structure and overhauled it without government money. It opened debt-free, said Tim Nielsen, a pastor at City Church on Maryland Street, whose congregation consists mostly of newcomers to Canada.

The church and congregation launched the housing project three years ago. It relied on private donations and thousands of hours of donated labour and materials. “And it’s beautiful,” Nielsen said.

The communal, second-floor living room has doors that open onto a giant patio at eye level with the West End’s tree canopy and neighbouring rooftops. A huge main-floor kitchen and dining area has two stoves and two microwave ovens for residents to cook together.

There will be cooking classes, English lessons and computer instruction on laptops the residents can use while they are staying at Naomi House, Nielsen said, adding that he sees it as being a place where churches and other community groups wanting to help can volunteer.

Each of the beds has a quilt hand-stitched by Hutterites, who made them for the newcomers, said tour guide Shawbaz Khan, a City Church member and volunteer.

Residents will have a key fob to get into the security camera-equipped building and an access code for their bedroom, said Lemlem Aregay, another tour guide and City Church volunteer.

The building will also house City Church offices and some live-in staff. Naomi House director Jim Leschied and his wife, Molly, a resettlement worker, moved in in May. They’ve reached out to other resettlement services in Winnipeg and their neighbours in the West End.

“We have gotten to know people up and down the street,” Leschied said. “It’s wonderfully diverse.”

On a weekend when anti-immigrant protesters clashed at an irregular border crossing in Quebec and in Ottawa, Leschied said the mood around Naomi House has been a lot friendlier.

“I haven’t experienced or heard a regressive thing in my four months here,” he said. “It’s very welcoming.”

A refugee claimant from Ethiopia and her two children are first residents of Naomi House, he said.

The sooner someone takes newcomers under their wing and helps them, the sooner they get connected to the community and jobs, said Indy Cung Cin, who arrived in Winnipeg as a refugee in 1996 from Myanmar and is now a pastor at City Church.

“We have so many barriers — language, culture shock — we should be supporting them so they can work hard,” he said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca