Multiple Authors
Published in December 2020
We have collected stories from around The Working Centre community to provide perspective about how our work has changed and adapted during the pandemic.
Connie Watson, Kayli Kinnear & Bryan Moyer Suderman: St. John’s Kitchen Drop-in
We’ve been on quite a journey at St. John’s Kitchen (SJK) since the arrival of COVID-19 in our community. By March 15th our traditional lunch for 350 people was now being handed out as a takeout meal from our entrance door. To reopen our dining room, we worked with the Region of Waterloo, including seconded workers, to help set up all the protocols necessary to create a COVID safe environment.
The focus in reopening was on welcoming unsheltered folk indoors and meeting their more urgent needs, while continuing to serve food to the sheltered community out of our garage space. This was not a sharp delineation, and we have tried to remain open and flexible in terms of sheltered community members who rely on the space for a sense of community and connection.
As seconded staff were recalled to their permanent positions, SJK transitioned back to its more familiar roots. Throughout the summer and fall the space has hosted up to 180 people each day using COVID safe practices with limits of 30 people in the space at a time, increased cleaning, and encouraging mask wearing and physical distancing. As everywhere, the effect of the pandemic on SJK has been disruptive and continues to affect the day to day flow of this busy hub. The capacity restrictions, in particular, can feel discouraging as people struggle waiting in long lineups to access the space and facilities.
Yet, the COVID restrictions have created opportunities for people to connect with staff in a more intimate way once inside, which wasn’t as easy pre-pandemic, when the sheer numbers and volume in the space complicated these interactions. These moments of connection are so crucial, particularly for the most acutely marginalized members of our community who continue to access the space at such an uncertain time. Together, as a community, we continue to support each other and alleviate the anxiety in the face of constant change.
Rebecca Mancini: Expanding Capacity to Prepare Meals
At the core of St. John’s Kitchen is the daily meal that many hands prepare. With the start of the pandemic, our kitchens stopped producing for almost the first time in 35 years and we instead distributed meals supplied by the Food Bank. By August, we were able to start cooking again but it took a drastic reimagining of how this could be possible. In normal times, we would make about 300 meals with a crew of volunteers each day.
We were now looking at serving about 600 meals with limited capacity for social distancing in the daytimes. We rolled up our sleeves and a limited crew of us started cooking each night to prepare for the next day’s meal. A dedicated and hardworking group of about 60 different people volunteered with us to make this magic happen. And what a gift that was! We quickly discovered that this was not long term sustainable and as the winter stretched before us, we decided to convert Maurita’s Kitchen into a commissary kitchen with capacity to cook for the volume we were now producing. In October we moved into this renewed space and now have a full day to cook and more space to welcome volunteers into the creation of the daily meal.
Gwen Gerencser: Food Distribution from the Garage
When word first came out back in March that SJK needed to close its doors because of the pandemic, the staff and volunteers in the kitchen were heartbroken to serve lunch to our community by ‘take-out’ only.
Eventually, the daily take-out was served from the garage in the Worth A Second Look parking lot. This did not feel hospitable at the time, considering the garage was used for storage and refuse. BUT, we were ready to serve hot lunches and food hamper distribution after a major cleanup, the installation of a sink for washing, and sections for proper food storage.
Colourful tables and chairs donated by the City of Kitchener brightened up the parking lot space, as well as canopies to either help give shade from the sun or shelter from the rain. This venue has allowed our community to change a parking lot into a place of gathering and it gives us a sense of hope that we will get through this by helping each other out. Every week day we distribute over 200 meals to our community.
With the beautiful fall weather, the parking lot was even more hospitable, often the canopies were not needed as people wanted to sit and enjoy the sunshine. We are now making plans to continue distributing food through the garage which is now heated.
Chris Hodnett: Job Café
When COVID hit in March most of Job Café shut down. By June plans started to be developed to reactivate the Downtown Kitchener Discovery Team, the Street Sweeping Team, and Clean Team Two which picks up garbage after 5:00 each weekday. These requests were meaningful to the Job Café teams because it demonstrated how integral Job Café is to the Kitchener downtown. Many of these requests were related to opening up the downtown and especially the patios. The Discovery Team is able to provide two workers who walk throughout the downtown and provide on-the-street support where needed. The Street Sweepers have been a constant presence keeping the streets clean. Clean Team Two was running by mid-July and was able to pick up garbage around the downtown each evening. These jobs were more important than ever during this time of COVID. When Job Cafe started, the streets were nearly empty and as the three teams regularly went about their work, we were welcomed back with sincere Thanks from citizens. It was as if our presence marked the emergence of things returning to normal.
Kiegan Irish: Water Street House
Water Street House is a new project for The Working Centre designed to be a place for people who have experienced homelessness and substance use to heal from medical issues. Our common understanding of healing today is linear, one is ill and gets better over time. With complex and compounding issues, sometimes the path to healing can be much less linear and instead happens in staggers and fits and starts. At the foundation of a path to health we need to have a safe place to live. This is the central concept at Water Street House. While the people we work with come from some very difficult places, we work every day to honour them with a dignified place to heal and grow. There may be stumbling blocks but our commitment is to create a community and provide a home for people for whom positive experiences of home might be rare.
Nico Jaussaud & Sarah Hillier: St. John’s Kitchen Encampment
For many months now, there has been a regular, evolving encampment outside the St. John’s Kitchen drop-in. More than 80 people used this encampment site as a bridge towards finding other housing. The encampment began with a single individual who was unable to access shelter, according to their guidelines. He was welcome to come in and access the shower, washrooms, and food. It was a logical choice, in the middle of the pandemic with so many services and buildings closed, to camp outside our doors. From there, others, who for various reasons didn’t fit well in the mainstream shelter system, followed suit. In a time of extremely limited access to indoor spaces and great uncertainty around safe places to tent, we became one of the few spots in town where people knew they would not be shuffled along.
The unsheltered folk that have made this place their temporary home have a magnetic energy to them. They would draw in and support those who were increasingly marginalized by the extreme conditions created by the pandemic. This complemented the work of the drop-in staff, who were able to check in day to day and to support the medical needs of the group. With the creation of University Avenue housing and the increase in shelter options and spaces this fall, many of the tenters have found indoor places to stay. It was a cooperative effort to clean up and close the encampment by the end of October. We continue to seek options that work for the many remaining folk that are looking to move indoors. Barriers to accessing shelter include couples wishing to stay together, limited shelter options for women and youth, people with pets, those that don’t feel safe in the current shelters or struggle navigating the complexities of the shelter system, including those that face service restrictions.
Jay Straus: How the Pandemic Affected UA Residence
What a great experiment University Avenue (UA) housing has been – 80 people moved from the street to this congregate dorm style housing. We learned a lot about COVID in congregate settings – how to keep people as safe as possible.
To help keep everyone safe we had to get people to agree that there would be no guests in the building for two weeks. At the end of that period we were then faced with the mandate that congregate living arrangements need to be restricted to essential visitors only.
That news received much push back from the residents, it has taken continuous messaging and conversations to smooth relationships. We would like nothing more than to allow people to have a friend visit, but this is what we face.
Catherine Scida: Reflecting on UA Residence
It has been a focused effort to sign up and move 80 people from the street and in temporary motels into the University Avenue (UA) residence. This effort makes me think back to where our community was a year ago, operating a temporary warming centre to keep folks out of the cold. It amazes me how resilient this group has been throughout the pandemic. Throughout our move to the dorms, many residents have shared sentiments about what stability looked like a year ago, compared to now. Moving folks into this new space has given them the opportunity to create a home and to build community. Although we are in the early stages of a beautiful project, I have seen new friendships blossoming, individuals managing conflict in creative ways and coming together to support each other in this new environment that hasn’t been readily available to folks for too long.
Deb Worth: Waterloo Discovery Team
As the Uptown Waterloo Discovery Team launched in early October, the Discovery Team Waterloo (DTW) team partnered with the BIA staff, security teams for the City of Waterloo buildings and the shops, and community engagement officers, we walked the uptown streets, greeting street-involved individuals and BIA members alike to introduce the team members.
Downtown Kitchener Discovery Team members shared valuable knowledge and experience with the new DTW team on their walks together in uptown Waterloo.
The DTW has begun to build relationships with the uptown Waterloo community and have felt quite welcome by the street involved individuals, BIA members, and passersby. During the first week, DTW team members began to be approached and asked about their brilliant green T-shirts and appreciated the opportunity to share their message of welcome and community.
DTW team members appreciated the collaboration between the partners on the first walk-along in October. The connections started right away and immediately a young street-involved fellow was connected to The Working Centre’s University Residence and was able to move in later that week. St. John’s Kitchen, DTW team members, and WRPS Community Resource Officers have continued a daily dialogue with other street involved individuals about their housing options and other resources.
Outreach In The Pandemic
At the beginning of the pandemic, our outreach teams knew that the most important work was to walk up and down King Street, day and night, offering blankets, sleeping bags, and food to people without housing. Supports for basic needs, access to health care and mental health supports all closed down – food, indoor spaces, bathrooms, community connections. With support from the Region we moved some of the most at-risk folk to motels for interim stays and we turned our focus to access to basic needs of food, shelter and health care. We developed deep relationships of solidarity with people in motels, in encampments, and with people who came to our drop-ins.
Many of the people we connected with were the same people who accessed the warming spaces last winter. We have been excited to build the interim housing at University Ave, but we continue to advocate for more access to housing/shelter for another 100 to 200 people. Close alignment within the Inner City Health Alliance has built access to an isolation ward, collaborative access to health care supports, and a growing response to overdose prevention and wellness.
