One chapter in the Tri-Cities' battle against homelessness has ended and another is about to begin as the five-year-old cold/wet weather mat program shuts down for the last time this weekend.
Since 2007, the program has run from the beginning of October to the end of March, shuttling people without a home to various churches throughout the region during the coldest months of the year.
Julie Lebrun, the minister at St. Andrew's United Church in Port Moody, one of several host churches of the mat program, said community attitudes about the homeless have changed dramatically since the initiative was launched five years ago.
"Early on, there was a lot of work bridging with the neighbours," she said. "Now, the whole landscape has changed."
In 2007, contentious public meetings were held, events that became more and more subdued as residents learned more about the program and the homeless population.
"By the fifth year, we would have our meetings and nobody came," Lebrun said. "The people that did show up came because they wanted to volunteer."
A shelter program will continue next year, but under a new format.
Instead of rotating between Tri-City churches, a bridge shelter is being proposed for Grace Church in Port Coquitlam, which would operate until a permanent shelter can be built at 3030 Gordon Ave. in Coquitlam.
After five years of hosting the mat program, an initiative that was only expected to last a couple years, Lebrun said she is happy to see another facility take on the effort.
"We want to do what we can," she said. "But from our point of view, we wouldn't want to keep this going indefinitely. We are pleased to see it going on to a better facility and we see this as a stepping stone."
Rob Thiessen, the director of homeless outreach organization the Hope for Freedom Society, said the bridge shelter will be different from the previous system in several fundamental ways.
When the cold/wet weather mat program was proposed five years ago, residents said they had concerns about homeless people wandering through their neighbourhoods in order to get to the various churches for shelter. That issue was addressed by implementing a shuttle system, which picked up the homeless at designated locations and drove them to the shelter at night, returning them the next day.
Grace's bridge shelter will allow the homeless to get to the location on their own, Thiessen said, saving the costs of fuelling and operating the 15-person shuttle.
The mat program, he added, has accomplished a lot during the last five years, and has been the first step toward permanent housing for countless homeless people.
Volunteers who helped oversee the shelters were also instrumental in the success of the program and the public education on the issue, said Sandy Burpee, chair of the Tri-Cities Homelessness Task Group.
"Just the number of volunteers that have been involved is in the many hundreds," he said. "Those are people that would not have had any contact with the homeless and have had the opportunity to find out they are people just like the rest of us."
As the shelter program moves into its next phase and eventually into a permanent facility, Burpee said it will be important for the community to remain engaged with the process.
Maintaining the connection between residents and people without shelter is an important part of dispelling some of the myths that surround the homeless population, he said.
"Initially, there were some dire predictions from the community about the impact of the mat program that did not materialize," he said. "I expect now there will be a bit less judgement and a bit more acceptance."
