Funding pulled for downtown library space for homeless By: Nicole Buffie Posted: 5:53 PM CST Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024

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This article was published 11/12/2024 (581 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Community connections, the space in the downtown Millennium Library that provides support to the homeless population, will close at the end of this month when city funding comes to an end.

The municipal government hasn’t included funding in the 2025 budget released Wednesday.

Finance committee chairman Jeff Browaty said the community connections space posed a safety concern for library staff and the public.

“We continue to see some challenges at the downtown Millennium Library, most recently involving an edged weapon,” he said, adding the funding was always due to expire in accordance with the city’s multi-year budget.

Winnipeg police reported on Dec. 1 that a woman was arrested after she tried to take a knife into the library. After she was denied entry, she pulled out the knife and threatened two male security guards, police said at the time.

The move to end funding was called “extremely short-sighted” by Manitoba Library Association program coordinator Kirsten Wurmann.

“These folks come into the library whether community connections exist or not,” Wurmann said. “It actually makes the entire library safer for the community and for the staff.”

The annual cost of the hub is $614,000. Its staff includes 4.2 full-time equivalent library staff, a librarian, two community safety hosts and three part-time library service assistants. Their contracts will not be renewed.

Community safety hosts are trained in security and trauma crisis work.

Wurmann said the space is an alternative for people who do not want to enter the library through metal detectors or need to spend more time with employees seeking information.

From October 2023 to September 2024, the space handled 24,296 information requests, while all other Millennium Library service desks combined handled 29,701 requests.

The quarterly report shows all Winnipeg libraries recorded 384 safety incidents from July to September. The Millennium library accounted for 211 of those encounters.

There were 112,181 visits to the downtown library from July to September — up from 108,227 visits from April to June.

Wurmann said a library needs to reflect the community that it is in and eliminating the space will only hurt downtown.

“It just doesn’t make sense and it goes against everything that the city has said that (it is) committed to,” she said, referencing the city’s poverty reduction strategy that calls the space valuable.

Community connections staff made 928 referrals to outside agencies and resources from October 2023 to September 2024.

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Browaty said safety hosts will continue to be stationed in the library to handle social service requests.

Coun. Evan Duncan has called for the space to move out of the library due to the safety risk to the public, but Coun. Cindy Gilroy said the move would be wrongheaded.

“I’ve witnessed it myself. Issues are de-escalated before they arise in the library and a lot of the times, the security guards just do not have the same level of approach and de-escalating that the community connectors have,” Gilroy said.

Gord Delbridge, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 500 which represents library workers, called on other levels of government to help pay for and expand the space.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole 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.