Northumberland Sleeping Cabin Collective holding Open House
By Cecilia Nasmith
The opportunity to learn more about a proposed group of sleeping cabins to be set up for six months on Furnace Street in Cobourg will take place March 21 from 4 to 8 p.m. at a Community Open House at Cobourg Public Library.
The six-month-long project to set up nine to 12 of them as a transitional emergency response to fill the gap in housing is at the stage of community consultation before it proceeds further, and this is one step in that process.
The Northumberland Sleeping Cabin Collective, who are behind the initiative, will host the session, which will include the opportunity to examine one of these eight-by-ten-foot insulated cabins that offer enough room for a person to shelter, sleep and keep oneself and one's belongings safe. Shared washrooms and cooking facilities will be in a separate common space, and the project includes on-site management and access to such social services as mental-health and addiction counselling and WrapAround Facilitation.
This kind of thing has been done successfully in Kingston and Waterloo, and a Peterborough group is working on a similar project. As well, sleeping-cabin villages have been set u in many states. From these examples, the NSCC has incorporated not just the cabin prototype but also the governance, resident supports and community integration to prove long-term viability and help residents transition to more permanent housing.
Members of the public are invited to drop in, examine the cabin on display, learn how the project has evolved, get their questions answered, and share ideas, hopes, concerns and feedback with members of the collective.
“Our engagement to date with hundreds of Northumberland residents continues to inspire us to become the first achievable piece to bridge the housing gap that we all acknowledge is a heart-breaking situation,” NSCC Chair Alastair McKeating said in the press release.
“It's not the best solution, it's not the long-term solution, but it can provide some respite for a small number, and other providers can follow with more enduring solutions.”
