St. Thomas will soon be home to a new multi-million dollar women's shelter.
Minister of Community and Social Services Dr. Helen Jaczek announced Thursday morning that $1.93-million is going towards a new shelter, after the community raised over $1.1-million on its own.
It is expected the new facility will be open by summer of 2016. It will replace the 98-year-old two bathroom, seven bedroom shelter St. Thomas has now.
"It really doesn't provide that kind of shelter where women need to heal, they need to feel safe and their children need to have a place to play," says Minister Jaczek. "The current situation here just is not adequate."
The new facility will be roughly five times larger than the current shelter and have designated spaces for mothers, children and teenagers.
"We will sell the existing building and we hope it will become some affordable housing, ideally a four-plex, and ideally women who have stayed with us can get rent there at a good price," says Executive Director of Elgin County's Violence Against Women Services Liz Brown, who notes the current situation is causing several problems. "It means that families share rooms together, which means that when one woman is waking in the night screaming from the trauma she is remember from when she was sexually harmed as a child another child is sleeping in the same room."
Construction will start this summer. The new shelter will be built on Princess St., right off of Talbot St. in St. Thomas.