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Safe ride cut hours as shelters fill up

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Lydia Bardak, safe ride co-ordinator, left, and Connie Roberts, outreach worker, are pictured with the safe ride van in Yellowknife on Friday. Sidney Cohen/NNSL photo

The safe ride outreach van cut its hours on Yellowknife streets because there is nowhere to take men in need after 11 p.m.

Since the sobering centre closed on Sept. 15, late-night shelter for men has been hard to come by, says Lydia Bardak, coordinator of the program that offers free rides to people who may not have other options.

The Salvation Army closes its doors at 11 p.m., but often hits capacity by 10 p.m., she said.

The Centre for Northern Families women's shelter, however, accepts women all night long.

“It would just be torture to be out there roaming the streets saying, 'Ladies only, sorry guys,'” Bardak told Yellowknifer last week.

“Until the sobering centre reopens, we'll stick with 11 (p.m.) until some other solution materializes, but even 11 is a challenge with the Salvation Army becoming full at capacity so often now.”

Previously, the safe ride van drove around the city between 1 p.m. and 1 a.m.

It's hard to know how many people are being denied entry to the Salvation Army because there is no one at the door keeping track, said Bardak.

The Salvation Army declined requests for comment.

Bardak estimates that 30 per cent of safe ride trips were made to the sobering centre when it was operational.

A temporary sobering centre was located at the Yellowknife Community Arena from mid-July to mid-September, but that venue is now being used for sports.

It was always the plan for the sobering centre to leave the arena when regular recreational programming began, Damien Healy, spokesperson for the territorial Health and Social Services department stated in an email Tuesday.

The department is now negotiating a lease for new temporary space to house the centre until the permanent location at 5111 50 Street is ready.

The department will not offer details about where the temporary centre will be, or when it will open, until the lease is signed.

Bardak is baffled by the hold up.

“It's hard to understand how there can be so much vacant space downtown, and so much concern and complaints from the business community about loitering and public intoxication, and no one has a solution to house the (temporary) sobering centre,” she said.

The permanent sobering centre is undergoing renovations and is slated to open in the summer of 2018, said Healy.

Bardak says that when the sobering centre was open, the Salvation Army didn't fill up like it does now.

The colder weather could also be contributing to higher numbers at the shelter, she said.

Bree Denning, the executive director of the Yellowknife Women's Society, which runs the safe ride program, says a dearth of shelter spaces in Yellowknife is an “ongoing challenge.”

“Salvation Army has been cooperative in communicating to staff if they reach capacity before the curfew of 11 p.m.,” she stated in an email.

She added outreach workers will drive a person to the home of friend or relative, if that's an option, or notify the RCMP or EMS if a person is “at risk, or incapacitated.”

If there is nowhere else for them to go, says Bardak, people will “sleep rough,” in stairwells or under a tarp or tent outside.