If you are requiring shelter call River City Vineyard 519-383-8463 

between 8am and 8pm Harbour Inn 519-383-8323 between 8pm and 9am

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See pictures of the shelter here.

 

See news articles here.

 

If you want to read or use the guest letter click here

 

River City Philosophy on Caring For Our Neighbour here

 

A men’s mission emergency shelter was opened in the beginning of November 2006. We saw a need, had the space and decided to act. So far, it has been an interesting journey. When we started, we ran into some opposition from some neighbours. Their main objections seemed to be that they didn’t appreciate having a homeless shelter in their neighbourhood and that they thought we were running without the proper zoning. Some also believed that running without professional paid staff was not in everyone’s best interest.
After a 5 hour city council meeting, we were granted a temporary zone change with a capacity for 15 beds for men and 6 for women. According to the health unit we have the capacity for 28 beds in one room and 8 in a second room. .
Since we started, we ran into some opposition with the neighbourhood. In retrospect, this has been a good thing with all the publicity we received from the press. Most importantly, it has raised awareness of homelessness in the city, as many people were shocked that we had homeless people in Sarnia. We have support for the shelter from city hall, agencies and most neighbours and citizens of our city. We met with two of the neighbourhood group leaders and we believe the neighbors are mostly ok with the project. Most of the opposition from the neighbours is ‘fear of the unknown’. Some of the questions posed were, “How big will it get? What happens when the men leave the facility? Will this shelter make our neighbourhood unsafe?” We don’t believe the concerns are petty and we are communicating with them to help ease their fears. They realize that once the zoning is approved, it is approved forever and we may make it bigger or have more problems than we anticipate. To help create a win-win situation, we were open to the idea of doing a temporary zoning, which would give us time to prove ourselves and give the neighbour’s time to evaluate the long term effect of a shelter in the area.

To some degree, our church has worked with the homeless for 9 years, providing a shower program, complete with a towel, soap, toothpaste, sanitary products, etc. We also provide some meals for them, and always have coffee on, as well as a place for them to come out of the cold at certain times. Free clothing has also been available, so now we are just extending our provision with a bed.
We currently run with a volunteer staff of around 40 people. We have 2 shifts; 8pm-midnight and midnight - 9am. We have a minimum of 2 people on per shift with one person required to be awake at all times.
We are open from 8pm till 9am the next morning. We provide toast and coffee in the morning.

Our principals and values are:

• Everyone should be treated with dignity and valued as a human being. Everyone has a great potential worth that can be tapped into. God created everyone equal. Homeless people are people, not objects and therefore should be treated as guests in our home. 
• Every person in our society should have a place to sleep, a place to wash, a place to eat and be fully clothed. Some people don’t have the capacity to always function in society, obey rules set out and to get along with those offering assistance. They too need our help and we have the power to act. 
• The quality of care should be a balance of treating a person like a guest in our home and giving a level of care that is conducive to them working to provide their own shelter. In other words, we don’t want to make a place that is a replacement of a home but more of a last resort, so that we don’t enable homelessness. Also, when the guests come, they should feel welcomed, at home, loved and cared for. 
• The goal should be to help enable homeless people to rise up, dream again of possibilities and reach their potential. 
  

Recent news has it that “The Inn of the Good Shepherd” is planning on building a 20 bed shelter with a 20 bed transitional housing part. We welcome this idea. We believe that Sarnia needs around 100 shelter beds. London has 450 beds and is 320,000 in population and is roughly 4 times the size of Sarnia. Toronto has approximately 5,000 beds and has a population of around 3 million. So, doing the math with some rounding, 100 beds would be a good number at this time. The key to keeping it to 100, is to minimize attracting homeless from other cities. We know from talking to the homeless in Sarnia that a lot of them found themselves in shelters in London. We do not believe this is “right”. We need to look after our own homeless, instead of making them go to other cities. We also don’t want to attract others that are part of another city. People who live in Sarnia have a network of friends, family, doctors, contacts etc. There is enough stress with finding yourself homeless, let alone having to move to a strange city. Some people do need a geographic change to get them away from peers who influence them in a negative way, and so we should be able to receive some of them in exchange for some of ours.

Our goal is to raise awareness and work on the County of Lambton” for a larger and long term solution. We want our shelter to be primarily available to help those who fall through the cracks and who don’t “qualify” for county assistance. Currently the county has a program that will put people up in local hotels for up to 30 days, 

Currently we have helped many different individuals with shelter and many of those to find a place of their own. We have no government assistance and run solely on the generosity of the local people. We have asked the large petro-chemical plants to help us and have received donations from many sources. Most say their policies prevent them from helping us because we are a church.

We are thankful to everyone who has contributed to this and help make it a success.