Brock Mission rental units delayed

While the new Brock Mission men’s shelter at 217 Murray St. has been open since June 10, its 15 affordable rental units — designed to house men temporarily as they search for a more permanent home — won’t likely be open for another few weeks at least.

Brock Mission hopes to start using those transitional housing units — for which men pay a nominal rent — by mid-August, said city communications manager Brendan Wedley in an email.

But the opening date will depend on how fast furniture — beds, for example — can be procured and shipped in the ongoing pandemic, Wedley added.

“The availability and delivery of the furniture for the units has been a challenge with COVID-19 related delays cited by suppliers,” Wedley wrote.

Coun. Henry Clarke, the city’s housing chair, said Wednesday it’s good news that the

emergency beds are open and that the rentals are coming soon.

“Those self-contained apartments should be an absolute godsend,” he said.

The Brock Mission is a Christian charity and has a contract with the city to shelter local people who are experiencing homelessness.

The new rental units will be staffed by three people from Fourcast, an addiction treatment agency that also runs homelessness programs.

A case manager and two housing support workers will help the men further develop skills needed to transition into more longer-term housing, said Fourcast executive director Donna Rogers.

The $9-million Brock Mission building received about $5 million in federal funding.

Peterborough County also contributed to the project while the Ontario government provides annual funding for housing and homelessness services (such as staffing for the transitional units, for example).

Mortlock Construction is the contractor and Lett Architects did the design for the new building.

Wedley wrote that in June the new Brock was nearly full, operating at 96 per cent capacity for the month.

The new building replaced a dilapidated one on the same property, demolished in late 2017.

The Brock Mission then relocated to a temporary shelter in the auditorium at St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church at Murray and Water streets.

Since then, the historic St. Paul’s church — which had structural issues — was also torn down, with the auditorium from 1959 remaining intact and in use as a shelter (it’s now vacant).

The previous Brock Mission building was never designed to be a shelter: it was a church before its conversion into a Legion Hall. It was first used as a shelter in 2006, when the original Brock Mission on Brock Street became overcrowded.