{"id":5519,"date":"2023-01-26T14:06:04","date_gmt":"2023-01-26T18:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluedoor.ca\/?p=5519"},"modified":"2023-08-14T11:12:58","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T15:12:58","slug":"proposed-mens-shelter-in-aurora-sparks-heated-words-concern-and-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluedoor.ca\/proposed-mens-shelter-in-aurora-sparks-heated-words-concern-and-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed men\u2019s shelter in Aurora sparks heated words, concern and empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted: January 26th, 2023. By: Melissa Wallace, yorkregion.com, Original Article.<\/a><\/p>\n

Emergency and transitional site was selected due to its proximity to services, accessibility via transit, Blue Door CEO says.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Community members packed Aurora Town Hall on Jan. 24 regarding a proposed men\u2019s emergency and transitional housing facility at 14452 Yonge St., south of Henderson Drive, east of Bathurst Street and north of Bloomington Road.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The five-storey facility will replace Porter Place, a shelter operated by\u00a0Blue Door<\/a>\u00a0in East Gwillimbury. Slated for completion by the spring of 2025, it will have 37 emergency housing and 18 transitional housing units.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is not just a cut-and-paste building from another place,\u201d said Melissa McEnroe, affordable housing development, Housing Services, York Region. \u201cWe are using the best research and the best practices to ensure that the project we\u2019re putting here meets the complex needs of those who will be receiving care.\u201d<\/p>\n

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She added the new facility, which will be built beside the new Henderson Sewage Pumping Station on property owned by the region, will bring community partners together to support men to find and keep housing, as well as prevent homelessness before it happens.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Area residents opposed to the project, however, raised concerns over safety, loss of property value and what they called a \u201clack of transparency\u201d about the location.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cAs a parent of a young family, what we residents want to see is a safe community and one that is thought out and well planned,\u201d said Quasi Sodiya, a resident who lives close to the proposed facility.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re not against the shelter or the social need, but we\u2019re really concerned about the proposed site. It\u2019s just going to be plopped in the middle of a forest area surrounded by detached homes \u2026 It doesn\u2019t pass the common sense test.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Many residents said they found it insulting that they only found out about the facility within the past week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cNinety-nine per cent of the people here had no idea (about this),\u201d said Roy Cohen, president of the Aurora Youth Soccer Club and a 40-year Aurora resident.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Cohen wanted to know how the region would be vetting the men who would be staying at the facility and implored council to step up as \u201cgatekeepers of the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s abominable, shameful that you would put them beside the waste sewage pumping station and train tracks that I hear from where I live,\u201d said Cohen. \u201cThis is the wrong location.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not everyone, however, is opposed to the idea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Lyndsay Breedon, a 22-year-old student at Seneca\u2019s social service worker program and a longtime resident, said the community should feel proud that the town was chosen to help individuals in need.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cHomelessness is an issue in Aurora, it\u2019s not new. It\u2019s everywhere, and we need somewhere for them to go, it\u2019s not safe,\u201d said Breedon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI understand your fear, but they\u2019re not inherently bad because of the situation they\u2019re in,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re in it for situations out of their control \u2026 They are our community. If you got to know some of the people, you wouldn\u2019t be scared. It\u2019s up to us to help them out or else no one\u2019s going to.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Blue Door CEO Michael Braithwaite said there is no \u201cperfect spot\u201d for emergency housing, but the proposed site is more central to services and allows access to transit across the region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen people say, \u2018We don\u2019t really want these people here,\u2019 well, they don\u2019t want to be there either,\u201d said Braithwaite. \u201cNo one has a yearning to be in emergency housing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But he added the ways in which individuals have benefited from such projects, including more than 200 people at risk of experiencing homelessness finding meaningful work in the trades through Blue Door\u2019s Construct program,\u00a0which now has a facility in Aurora<\/a>, and that Blue Door has also housed 1,600 people over the past five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Council agreed to host a second public planning meeting at a future date to ensure every resident felt their concerns were heard and to allow more time to work out the details with the region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Posted: January 26th, 2023. By: Melissa Wallace, yorkregion.com, Original Article. Emergency and transitional site was selected due to its proximity to services, accessibility via transit, Blue Door CEO says. Community members packed Aurora Town Hall on Jan. 24 regarding a proposed men\u2019s emergency and transitional housing facility at 14452 Yonge St., south of Henderson Drive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t