YWKW closing women’s shelter in downtown Kitchener to sell building

The organization says it will use the money from the sale to open two or three other locations across the region in order to serve its clients better.

The YW Kitchener-Waterloo says it is closing its emergency shelter property at 84 Frederick St. in downtown Kitchener and selling the property as it looks to redevelop the way it offers services to women in Waterloo Region.

The organization says it will use the money from the sale to open two or three smaller locations across the region to serve its clients better.

The YWKW is looking to close the shelter and have all of its clients transitioned to a new location by June 30.

Senior officials with the YWKW say the change is being made in part because the cost of maintaining the building was eating into money that could be better used to serve clients.

“That building is aging. Quite honestly, it’s taking a lot of capital support to keep it up and running, and it has outgrown its ability to serve the women we support,” YWKW CEO Jennifer Breaton told Global News.

She explained that the organization began to look for a new location last year while also continuing to reconsider how it serves the needs of women in the area

Breaton said the YWKW looked at other new shelter models that opened in the area, such as the House of Friendship’s ShelterCare and the Working Centre’s Erb’s Road setup, and toured other facilities as it looks to develop a new setup for its shelters.

“I think the most important thing we’ve done is we’ve really listened to the clients that we serve and then, importantly, we’ve listened to the clients that we don’t serve,” she said. “So we’ve heard from women who don’t use our shelter that they don’t see themselves in this space.”