“my experience with shelters is that, ‘all you need is a church basement and a granola bar and you’re good.’ this is not that,” said nakuset , co-founder of resilience.
with construction set to begin in the coming months, the new permanent home for resilience montreal — a day shelter that serves the unhoused, mostly indigenous population around cabot square — will do things differently. now an abandoned antique store with second- and third-floor living quarters, the facility is due to undergo a major transformation to create a space where every inch has been planned to serve the needs of a vulnerable clientele.
resilience’s current home is a quickly renovated defunct mcdonald’s turned high-end sushi restaurant. it has always been too small to meet the needs of the community it serves: unhoused montrealers, the vast majority from the indigenous community that hangs around cabot square. filling a vacuum left when the open door shelter in the area closed, resilience began renting the space in 2019, then needs shot up dramatically when the pandemic hit a few months later.
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