Dear Guest, Welcome to our shelter. We are honoured that you would come to our facility and trust us enough that you would be here. We all have periods in our life when we need help and other times when we can give help. With our facility we have an opportunity to give help and if you need a place to sleep, we think that we have a win-win situation.  We are a group of Christians who want to show love in a practical way. We are not doing this to try and get you “saved”, to go to church or for any religious reasons like that. We are doing this because God has put a love in our heart for people and because he asked to help those in need. We have no government assistance and don’t plan on obtaining any for two reasons. One, we feel that it is the church’s responsibility to help those in need and two; we feel that governments have too much bureaucracy and inefficiencies. Also, if they fund it, it is only a matter of time and they will start cutting the funding leaving us with a problem. Because you need a place to stay, you are considered “homeless” by society. Our society is one of the best in the world yet we do have our problems. The biggest problems are fear of the unknown and “what about me”. The thought of a homeless shelter in the neighbourhood can be unsettling for our fear based society, so we want to make sure that we are very low profile and therefore, have a minimal impact on the neighbourhood. While we believe we are in compliance with zoning and regulations, a tax paying complaining neighbour always has more clout with officials than a church group and we want to spend our energy helping others, not fighting with them. Our goal is to help those who find themselves temporarily homeless, to have a place to sleep and to assist them to have a place of their own with the means to pay for it. We want to provide a safe environment for our guests and members and treat everyone with respect, dignity and value. Here are a few things we ask of you while you stay with us. Please work with us so we can keep this shelter viable and meet our goals. 1. Please use the south west door. It will be open at 8pm. This is to minimize the traffic at the front door. We have a swimming pool, gun range, NA meetings, AA meetings and other activities that are exiting the building around that time. 2. We ask that once you come in you don’t leave. We don’t want to create a lot of activity outside, drawing attention to ourselves. 3. We are requiring 2 volunteers to staff the shelter. This is for your safety, for longevity of the shelter and to protect our assets. We ask that you assist and cooperate with the volunteers which would encourage them to continue volunteering. Without volunteers, we are not in a position to run the shelter. 4. We are asking for everyone’s real name. This is for your safety. We believe that it will be a safer environment for all if we know who is staying with us. So we ask that you give us your real first and last name, which will be put in a log book. We keep this for statistics, accountability reasons, and planning. 5. If you are in minor violation with the law, that is between you and them unless your violation with the law is of the nature that puts others staying with us at risk. We are not going to do police checks but we will be watching for dangerous offenders so you can sleep easy, knowing that we don’t have to worry about your personal safety. 6. Because this is volunteer based, we are going to ask you to help us out too. Sweeping, laundry, coffee, and other chores that make the place run, will be expected to be done by our guests. We will have a list available and you will be asked to sign up for a chore on the list. If asked to do something, please do it. 7. If you are staying multiple nights, please let us know. We only want to wash the bedding once a week. If you are only staying one night, please strip the bed and we will wash the bedding for the next guest. If you are staying multiple nights, please make your bed every morning. 8. Please don’t bring in any contrabands or alcohol into our facility. That is not conducive to us meeting our objectives. 9. Please don’t use rough, obscene or coarse language. There are better ways to communicate to each other. 10. We will provide coffee at 6am. We are aiming to have some food as well, such as toast and cereal, but can only do what funds permit. 11. To accommodate everyone we are going to ask that it be quiet between 11:00pm and 7:00am in the sleeping area. Lights out and TV off by 12am. 12. We ask that you stay in the shelter area and not “explore” other parts of the building. The security alarm will be set in the other part of the building and if you venture off into that area, the alarm will sound, the police will be dispatched and there will be a whole lot of aggravation that we really don’t need. 13. River City Centre provides a shower program (separate from the shelter) between 8am and 3pm by going to the front desk. They have towels and other items if you need it. 14. We ask that you are ready to leave the shelter by 9:00am. We are providing a shelter for sleeping and do not have the resources to allow guests to stay after 9:00am. 15. We want to develop a relationship with you so we can further assist you into finding a place of your own. Please be open and honest with us as we want to make ourselves available to help you. 16. If we find any guest in breech of our requests, we will ask them to leave, even if that guest is you. Being disruptive, rude, making inappropriate comments, in possession of alcohol or illegal drugs, or generally going against the grain will find people un-welcomed here and they will be asked to leave. I _____________________________ agree to the spirit of this letter and agree to do my part to help River City Centre make my stay and others a safe and pleasant one Date_____________ Signature___________________________