Making Home at St. John’s Kitchen

September 8

By the winter of 2019, it was increasingly clear that growing homelessness was an overwhelming issue at St. John’s Kitchen. You could see it in the number of people sleeping on the floor of the Kitchen, desperate for simple places to lie down and get some rest. At the same time drug use in the washrooms was creating a new kind of chaos. Those without housing respond to dislocation by using increasingly powerful drugs.   

It was at this time that David Gibson from Perimeter Development offered to bring together his longtime friend and architect, Joe Bogdan to help The Working Centre look closely at properties we owned or to consider other properties that could be used to build supportive housing. It was decided that the best option was to redesign the 97 Victoria N campus by rebuilding St. John’s Kitchen and adding 38 units of housing focused on those dealing with homelessness.

Throughout the pandemic, The Working Centre has worked closely with David Gibson and Craig Beattie from Perimeter Development and Joe Bogdan and Eli Newman from BNKC Architects to visualize and develop full plans for the 97 Victoria North campus.

This work may not have progressed except for Perimeter Development’s commitment to cover and support this pre-planning process. Their generous offer has given The Working Centre the amazing gift of having access to the best of Kitchener’s property development knowledge. It has enabled steady, developmental planning to move forward the many pieces of this relatively complicated project.

The design that we are presenting is the result of 2 years of background work. We are now moving towards site plan and building permit documents. We only have to look out the front window of St. John’s Kitchen to see the encampment of 50 tents at 100 Victoria to know how important it is to create long term housing.

For almost 20 years The Working Centre has built up the 97 Victoria N property where we have created a social economy that includes St. John’s Kitchen where 250 people a day are served meals, and access to medical supports, laundry, showers, and washrooms. Throughout the pandemic we have utilized the garage to distribute a further 200 takeout meals plus pantry goods from the Foodbank of Waterloo Region. Worth A Second Look Furniture and Housewares has consistently recycled and sold between 1500 - 2000 items per week. Since 2009, Hospitality House has provided 6 beds for homeless individuals with acute illness. The Community Dental Clinic is an important resource operating out of 82 Victoria N and before the pandemic provided excellent dental support to the homeless community.

The importance of this project cannot be overstated. In October 2021, a memorial service at St. John’s Kitchen remembered 76 people who had recently died, the vast majority from overdoses of widely available synthetic opioid drugs. Addressing homelessness means creating new housing and this project is designed to do exactly that.