Victoria Avenue Baptist Church recently became the new home for Belleville’s overnight warming centre where people who need to can beat the elements in the winter. Photo by Ryan Peddigrew, QNet News
By Ryan Peddigrew [1]
BELLEVILLE – Belleville saw some of its homelessness services jump into action in the past week when temperatures dropped lower than -10 C with heavy snowfall.
The city opened the overnight warming centre [2] at Victoria Avenue Baptist Church [3] Friday night and it stayed open until Monday. The church’s minister, Rev. Richard Smith, told QNet News Wednesday that he now did know the exact number of people who used the service, but based on the cleanup afterward it looked like it was fairly popular.
City council decided last November to move the warming centre from the Belleville Public Library after a report from Fire Chief Mark MacDonald saying the library was not the most suitable location [4]. Smith said the city approached his church about having the warming centre there and the church’s board voted unanimously in favour of it.
“I think they were looking for a place that maybe would be a little easier, that people might feel a little easier coming into,” he said.
Along with the warming centre, another church program aimed at helping those less fortunate in wintertime has sprung into action, as it has for the past decade.
The Inn From The Cold program at Bridge Street United Church [5] began serving up food Saturday, putting out over 200 meals in the first two days. The program offers meals made in-house to people in need during the hard winter months. It runs for 42 consecutive nights between January and February. Food-program manager Steve Van de Hoef said they rely on volunteers and donations from the community.
Grace Inn is Belleville’s only homeless shelter. It’s been near capacity since it opened in December. Photo by Ryan Peddigrew, QNet News
“One of the things that we do is serving the community and expressing hospitality, and for us this is one of the important ways that we participate in the life of the community, meet the needs of the community and show hospitality regardless of life circumstances,” said Van de Hoef.
While the churches got to work last week, Belleville’s new shelter for the homeless continued to offer a safe place for those with nowhere to go.
The Grace Inn shelter [6] has been operating nearly at full capacity since opening in December. Director Rob Crisp told QNet that the shelter averaged 11 people per night in its first week of operation and has since been almost filling its 21 beds.