Brandon drop-in centre permanently closed due to escalating violence

Tessa Adamski · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 20, 2025 11:20 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Escalating unit and information concerns person led staff to permanently adjacent a downtown Brandon drop-in centre for radical experiencing homelessness effectual Thursday.

Blue Door, which provided services including laundry and entree to food, a nationalist washroom and ablution for astir 80 radical daily, has been operating since 2021 done Ask Auntie Brandon. 

"This was not an casual choice, and we admit the profound interaction this volition person connected clients, unit and our community," said the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, which funds the drop-in, successful a societal media station past week.

BNRC committee members said they are committed to uncovering alternate enactment for those affected by the closure and would not remark further erstwhile contacted by CBC.

Other programming and services offered done Ask Auntie Brandon volition proceed to run, the station said.

Brandon Police Service Chief Tyler Bates said the Blue Door's closure astatine 31A 9th Street "has been a agelong clip coming."

"Certainly it started retired precise well-intentioned and determination were inactive a batch of important needs being met done that facility, but unluckily the information considerations became truthful pronounced that it superseded the viability of keeping that abstraction open," helium said.

Over the past 2 months, constabulary person responded to astir 25 calls astatine Blue Door for reports of assaults, including an battle that led to the decease of a woman, and weapons-related offences and overdoses, helium said.

While Blue Door occupied the main level of the building, aggregate radical lived successful the suites located upstairs which became "problematic" arsenic fights broke out between residents and assemblage members accessing service, Bates said.

Blue Door reduced its hours of cognition from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. successful precocious March. Bates said constabulary were precocious stationed astatine the gathering for 2 to 3 weeks during its opening hours successful an effort to ace down connected violence, but lacked resources to support a continued beingness astatine the building. 

He expects adjacent organizations serving the stateless colonisation successful the downtown country to spot an influx of radical accessing their services, including the anticipation of a longer lineup astatine the 7th Street Health Access Centre for those needing to shower.

"I surely bash expect that we're going to see, you know, that spread realized determination other wherever they person volumes possibly they haven't experienced before," helium said.

Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said unit astatine the centre had nary power implicit what was happening with the residents upstairs successful the building, but that closing Blue Door was "a determination that had to get made," to support susceptible people.

"We're going to bash everything we tin arsenic a assemblage … to marque definite that we tin find affirmative solutions for everybody," helium said.

So acold the metropolis and assorted stakeholders haven't recovered different determination for the centre.

"There's nary preferred spot," Fawcett said.

"Even successful our brief, you know, past fewer weeks of trying to fig out, 'OK, what is the champion mode to effort to bash immoderate things here' is, anyplace determination is simply a location, nobody wants it."

From January to March, 36 per cent of constabulary dispatches person been to the downtown area, Bates said.

The constabulary work is hoping to prosecute betwixt 7 and 9 cadets implicit the adjacent fewer months who volition assistance patrol the country and intervene successful escalating situations.