The need is real

After a nearly two-year battle to open homeless shelter, René Gauthier has the statistics to back St. Francis Place

St. Francis Place Homeless Shelter founder René Gauthier and shelter volunteers Raphael Dicosimo, and Carla Gauthier have been kept busy the last six months at Selkirk’s new homeless shelter.

By Austin Grabish, The Selkirk Record

It had a slow start, but St. Francis Place Homeless Shelter has been anything but quiet the last six months.

The shelter, which opened its doors officially on Nov. 16, 2014, has given hundreds of people a warm and safe place to stay, and the demand doesn’t seem to be going away.

Some of the shelter’s clients have been transients passing through Selkirk on route to another city or town ­– others are parents with children who have lost their home and have no beds to sleep in.

“We have a mixed group of people that come in,” said Raphael Dicosimo, a volunteer who has been instrumental in making the shelter’s first few months a success.

Doors to the shelter open at 7 p.m. each day and registration is on a first-come first-serve basis.

Questions aren’t asked when someone checks in at the shelter and the rules are simple for adults: if there’s an open bed you can stay the night.

Clients are given snacks and a continental breakfast before they leave the next day.

They also have the chance to take a shower and are given clean sheets and shampoo when they walk in the door.

There’s also a washer and dryer for folks to use if needed.

But the shelter only has six beds, and there have been several nights where all have been full.

No one has had to be turned away yet, but René Gauthier, the shelter’s founder knows it could happen. 

“It’s a lottery type of thing,” Gauthier said.

Gauthier, who is also the executive director of Our Daily Bread Soup Kitchen, had been pushing to establish a homeless shelter in Selkirk for the better part of two years before November’s opening.

He faced road blocks from a community with a severe case of NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard – and a council that was supportive, but reluctant to see the shelter open in the wrong location. Ultimately, council provided Gauthier with a building it eventually plans to demolish, and the shelter pays rents each month.

While Gauthier and those who worked with him to make it a reality knew there was a need for a shelter, there wasn’t a flood of takers when the doors finally did open. In fact, it sat empty for weeks.

“We did have a lull right at the beginning,” Dicosimo said.

But Gauthier says he knew people would start pouring in once word got around, and by the end of December, six people had spent the night at St. Francis Place.

That number doubled to 12 in January before growing to 60 in February, and now Gauthier pegs it at a few hundred.

Gauthier said once the shelter had its first client he knew there was a need for St. Francis Place in Selkirk.

“Once we had one person in here we said it was worth it,” Gauthier said.

The clients that have slept at the shelter aren’t whom Gauthier was expecting to see though.

“I expected the homeless to be the hardcore homeless, where they live on the street, like in Winnipeg,” Gauthier said.

But instead the vast majority of the folks who have used the shelter are people who have run into unexpected trouble, and the majority have been men.

Gauthier used an example of a man who was kicked out of his house for the night.

There have been a few regulars at St. Francis Place though, including a family.

Dicosimo said everyone is welcome at the shelter including addicts and alcoholics, and no one will be turned away providing there is adequate room.

“You shouldn’t be criticized always for your choices, because some of us don’t have the capacity to make the right ones, and some of us make the right ones and unfortunate things happen,” Dicosimo said.

She noted there have been no serious problems with clients at the shelter.

“Most people just want to get in and go to sleep,” Dicosimo said

She added the shelter is for all genders and no one will be treated differently based on their religion or sexuality. 

“It’s safe for everybody,” she said.

But there is a rule in place that says Child and Family Services must be called when anyone under the age of 18 checks-in.

“But I mean they’re going to have a place to stay until they can (come),” Dicosimo said.

The shelter’s rule is stays can be no longer than 30 days, but exceptions to it can be made if space permits, Gauthier said.

“We won’t leave these people outside,” Gauthier said.

A small group of volunteers have staffed St. Francis Place, but more are desperately needed, because some have left.

“Basically it’s a revolving door,” Gauthier said.

Volunteer Carla Gauthier said the overnight shift from 10:30 p.m. – 8:00 a.m. is the hardest to staff.

She said the ideal volunteer to fill that shift would be someone who is caring and can stay up late.

“I think it’s just the compassion for the people that have difficulties,” she said.

Anyone interested in volunteering can call 204-482-6448.

 -- First published in the Selkirk Record print edition May 13 2015 p.12