Wesley Day Centre, a hub for Hamilton’s most vulnerable, to close in early 2023

Hamilton's homeless population will be without a key service next year after Wesley Urban Ministries announced Wednesday they will shutter its longtime downtown day centre.

The permanent closure - effective March 31, 2023 - comes as the non-profit looks to maximize resources to address the root causes of homelessness, said executive director Don Seymour.

During the pandemic and the housing crisis we've seen homelessness become that much more visible, and we aren't seeing any movement of people beyond emergency services," Seymour said in an interview.

After long chats internally about what we could be doing differently to solve homelessness, we made the decision to put our resources into a different kind of service that creates more housing options."

It marks an unceremonious end to a medical and social-services hub that's served hundreds of vulnerable residents for more than 25 years.

Founded in 1996, the Wesley Day Centre has been a conduit for critical wraparound supports including on-site health and housing services, addiction counselling and treatment, HIV testing, a foot clinic and primary care.

But the centre's staple is its free meal program, which helps people who can't afford the bare necessities after paying rent stay housed. Seymour said around 650 people pop into the Catherine Street North hub every month for a meal.

Asked whether the closure will leave his clients in a hungry bind, Seymour said Wesley is connecting with its community partners to ensure the city's homeless remain fed.

We're working with other service providers to ensure that whoever picks up this clientele will have the resources to make sure people get meals," he said, pointing to local organizations such as HAMSMaRT and Keeping Six.

Food security has been a big part of our mandate since our inception, and that will continue. We have our own kitchen will continue to distribute meals to where they are needed."

The absence of a drop-in day centre in Hamilton will create challenges for the city's homeless community, said Jennifer Bonner, who operates a downtown, volunteer-run space for those living rough.

Still, the executive director of the Hub on Vine Street believes Wesley has the right intentions in closing its centre. Bonner said homelessness is a problem that can only be solved with thorough, long-term planning that emphasizes affordable housing alongside wraparound supports. What's in place now is a shelter system that acts like a Band-Aid over a gushing wound, she added.

I think a refocus is desperately needed, and we're not seeing it happen in the shelter system," Bonner said. The problem is we throw people into shelters or temporary housing and think they're going to be OK, but six months later, we see them back on the streets."

For Bonner, the main issue is the city not having a contingency plan in place to cope with the closure.

This is not new. The city has known this was coming for a long time because this has been discussed for months, and they've done nothing," she said. March is still winter, it's cold. If there's no contingency plan, people are going to freeze to death."

In a statement, Michelle Baird, director of the Hamilton's housing services division, said a lack of funding from the province has made it difficult for the city to operate homelessness services.

We continue to see unprecedented demand for homelessness system supports since the beginning of the pandemic, and while the city temporarily expanded various services during the pandemic, (we) no longer (have) the provincial and federal funding to continue operating services at this scale, and sector-wide staffing resources remain strained."

Sebastian Bron is a reporter at The Spectator. sbron@thespec.com