‘Not even fit for a dog’: protesters call for Manwin Hotel closure

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This article was published 13/10/2023 (696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Advocates crowded the sidewalk Friday afternoon outside the Manwin Hotel, drumming, singing and calling for the dingy and dilapidated building to be shuttered over safety and health concerns.

Barb Guimond organized the protest outside 655 Main St., a two-storey wood frame and brick veneer building constructed as the Walker Hotel in 1882.

The Winnipeg hotel’s 34 single rooms have since become longer-term housing — $650 a month, typically paid through provincial income assistance — for people near homelessness who can’t get a lease or place to stay otherwise.

“(I’m) speechless. It’s incomprehensible how somebody could live in here. I can’t stomach it,” Guimond said, standing inside the aging Manwin, the air reeking of mould. “It’s not even fit for a dog to live in here.”

Guimond is concerned about safety in the building, which has been the site of at least four slayings (including two this year) since 2017, as well as hazardous living conditions for its tenants.

One of the narrow second-floor hallways is lit with just a single fluorescent bulb and electrical wiring hangs loose in places. Few of the room doors have working locks.

One resident has the entrance to their room shuttered with a chain and padlock. The flooring sags underfoot and the staircases creak.

Guimond said she doesn’t think any repairs or renovations could improve the building enough for it to be fit to live in. She and others plan to lobby the province to shutter the building.

Few options for low-barrier housing

While others who work with precariously housed or homeless people in Winnipeg don’t think the building is a safe place to live in its current state, they aren’t as sure closing it is the answer.

“It’s become a scary, horrible place. I wouldn’t be willing to go in that building — you wouldn’t find any of our clients in there,” said Marion Willis of St. Boniface Street Links, which among other work helps people experiencing homelessness find a place to stay.

“But we don’t have an awful lot of low-barrier housing.”

Generally speaking, Willis said, buildings like the Manwin should be kept up to health and safety codes and outfitted with supports for people struggling, not shuttered outright.

“It’s easy to complain… If you remove the people out of the Manwin, now there’s the next… very large (homeless) encampment that will establish itself somewhere,” Willis said. “It’s constantly running in circles here, with no goals and nothing achieved.”

“If you remove the people out of the Manwin, now there’s the next… very large (homeless) encampment that will establish itself somewhere.”–Marion Willis

City of Winnipeg and provincial departments, along with support agencies, should work with building owners to protect and salvage the limited housing stock available for people who don’t have elsewhere to go, she added.

“Like it or not, the Manwin is a source of housing for people deep into addiction, whose lifestyles at this point in time are not going to make them very good tenants or even houseable in other buildings,” Willis said. “These are the people that nobody wants to house.”

‘We should be ashamed as a city’

Advocates calling for closure said Friday they feel for the tenants who would have to move, but anywhere else would be a better option.

“This isn’t the way people should be treated, this isn’t the way people should be living. If this is what our city is doing, we should be ashamed as city,” said Victor Mondaca of Sabe Peace Walkers, a street-level safety group.

Mondaca said he thinks spaces such as the Manwin would not be open if there were more emergency housing resources.

In the winter of 2021, provincial inspectors issued a health hazard order that temporarily closed the Manwin due to a lack of heat and water.

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On Friday, a provincial spokesperson said Manitoba Health’s health protection unit, along with other agencies, conducted an inspection in late August that found issues with minimum standards of housing.

Inspectors issued a list of needed fixes: work on toilets, showers and leaking pipes, new locks on washroom doors, pest control, holes in walls, and ventilation in washrooms to remove moisture for mould prevention.

The owner, the government spokesperson said, has been in contact with Manitoba Health to say some of the issues were addressed. A follow-up provincial inspection is planned Oct. 20.

The building’s owner could not be reached for comment Friday.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.