Mustard Seed adds extreme weather shelter at Alliance Church to serve homeless population

In partnership with the church and BC Housing, The Mustard Seed wants to help those in need avoid sleeping outside.

“Our philosophy is, ‘Where can we help and how can we do things that maybe can better the community?’ We do work more to the recovery side of things and in that you need it all. Homelessness is not something [where there] is one way of getting into it. There’s a lot of ways of getting into homelessness so there has to be a lot of ways of getting out of it,” says Mustard Seed Managing Director Kelly Thomson.

Thomson says the shelter will be open from 10:00 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. the next morning.

The church will be using the gym for sleeping arrangements and the kitchen to make food and breakfast in the morning for the nightly guests.

Thomson says he just wants to help people suffering from homelessness.

“We’ve seen people pass away and die in this cold extreme weather. It’s really important to me to have a place where people can go. They can get something to eat, they can get a rest. It’s still cold the rest of the time that they’re still around and hopefully, we can get them into more warming shelters during the day also — but at least during the night they can get out of the cold.”

Up to 30 people can stay in the church overnight and the Mustard Seed hopes to have enough staff to operate it starting December 14.

by Connor Gunn

Mustard Seed adds extreme weather shelter at Alliance Church to serve homeless population

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