Welcome to Junction Place.

That’s the name now for 731 Runnymede Rd. — the former Goodwill store that nearly four years ago the City of Toronto announced it planned to turn into a 100-bed men’s shelter.

In 2016 when it was first announced, the local community off Runnymede south of St. Clair Avenue West was up in arms. Many argued that the community, with its at-the-time poor access to public transit, was not suited for a shelter of such capacity, and they argued the 18,500-square-foot property was too small to hold 100 people and would lead to lineups of people waiting outside for a bed, and issues of safety.

Flash-forward to November 2019, and the new shelter — reduced to a 50-bed facility — has finally opened, with its first occupants coming later in November from the downtown Toronto Seaton House shelter as it gets set to close down.

And at a community open house last week, community members got their first look at the building that will house their new neighbours — some of whom have been living outdoors in the community for many years.

“There are a lot of people who live along the tracks,” said Lee Jeffrey, a neighbourhood resident who sat on the EMBRACE Committee of residents looking for ways to best integrate the new shelter into the community. “A lot of people at the initial meeting denied that, but I know there are people who live there or have been. There was a guy living under a tree on the other side of Runnymede, and I see people from my backyard, coming down the track.”

Jeffrey lives on the other side of the CP rail tracks just south of Junction Place, and said that her neighbours have generally been supportive of the shelter since it was announced.

Local York South—Weston Coun. Frances Nunziata (Ward 5) said that there still may be some selling to do with neighbours closer to the shelter who initially raised more concerns. But speaking in the bright community space that is attached at the front of the shelter, she said that the redesign should make it an easy sell.

The shelter operates on a new design model. Intake staff are on duty day and night, so clients will not be waiting outside on the sidewalk to come in. The shelter is liaising with police and other social services, and as a first for the shelter system includes community space for neighbourhood residents to use as a meeting space and also interact with the residents.

And the design itself is not typical of the kind of shelter that the community may have been led to expect.

“It’s so bright — it’s so clean and I think this will really bring along the community once the residents come in and see what it really looks like,” said Nunziata. “They had all these ideas of what it was going to look like — they thought it was a devil. But when they see how beautiful it is — (it’s) a beautiful space... In some of the shelters, the way they’re painted it looks like you’re in a prison. When the homeless men come in here, they won’t feel like they’re in a prison — it brightens up their life.”

The shelter space includes small dormitories of three or four beds and three private rooms — all of them pet-friendly; a teaching kitchen that will help men who are staying there learn essential life skills; referral services for social and legal counselling; a medical clinic; raised garden beds in back that both residents and the community can access; and showers and a laundry facility.

Monica Waldman currently manages Seaton House and will be managing this site as well. She said that the laundry and showers in particular are a part of the outreach that the shelter will do to try and draw the people who are living outdoors into the new space.

“We’re going to give access for those folks to our laundry and showers,” she said. “I’m hoping that’s an engagement tool for people who might be very apprehensive: come here for a shower and laundry, and maybe they’ll see it’s not so bad. They might feel comfortable enough that they come in from outside. Because we’re definitely looking for ways to open our doors to people who are living rough in the community.”

San Yip, who has lived in the Bloor/Dundas Street West neighbourhood for the past 20 years, came to the open house to get a look and was pleased with what she saw at Junction Place.

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But she was still worried about how things would go with her neighbours, many of whom might not be as supportive as she.

“We can try to educate as best we can but there’s only so much you can do,” she said. “The more people who know about it — the more people who are educated about it — (it) opens their mind. But how much is not under our control. Yet there are so many people living on the street, and the City of Toronto, all the levels of government, need to do something about it.”