The new emergency shelter for Safe N Sound is due to open in November.
Renovation of the old YMCA childcare building on 2nd Ave East in Owen Sound is underway.
Annette Pedlar, Executive Director of Safe N Sound told city council Monday, in an update on the shelter and its progress, it will be a 24 bed dormitory style facility with spots for five additional people who are awake. It will be operational year-round and will only be open at night.
Pedlar says, “The main reason for that is that the space itself is not big and once you put in 12 bunk beds, it quite obviously becomes 12 bunk beds in a room and that’s a challenging thing to have anything other than a sleeping quarters in that space.”
The building includes a shower, washroom, staff office and an area for people who are awake.
“We don’t want it to be that, ‘if you’re in here you’re sleeping, if you’re awake you’re out,’ because that’s not being a good neighbour, that’s not going to be great for someone who’s living beside us,” says Pedlar.
She notes there will be a vestibule area which can be used by individuals who have restrictions placed on them because of their conduct in the community. She says if it’s minus 20 degrees outside, there needs to be a place for a restricted person to shelter. “This vestibule area will be a way to have people come into the building. There will be a gate so that they’re able to shelter from the elements for an appropriate amount of time before being asked to leave again.”
She adds, in the basement the building, there will be a bigger room where service agencies will have desks and provide services in the morning before people leave the shelter for the day.
Pedlar says its important for services to meet people where they are.
She says they received $500,000 in federal funding to buy the building, noting, “That’s fantastic, but $500,00 barely gets you a single family home, let alone a building that can be used as a facility for dozens of folks experiencing homelessness, so this is the facility that we were able to acquire.”
She says Safe N Sound received $435,000 from Grey County for the operating costs.
Pedlar says, “It really needs to be very clear that a lot of the people who come and access Safe N’ Sound services have a disability, are part of some minority, in particular are Indigenous. Locally, our Indigenous population is 2.4 per cent but in total they were 27 per cent of the nights stayed at our facility. So that means that Indigenous community members were more than 11 times more likely to be needing Safe N Sound’s services.”
She adds, “I think that when we look at this in a longer horizon, we understand that this isn’t something that’s just the last five years in Owen Sound. This is something that has been set for decades and we are left holding a lot of many generations of failures for families.”
“I think it’s really important that you all know that homelessness is a solvable problem. It’s a solvable problem in Owen sound. It’s a solvable problem in Canada. There is a lack of belief right now, which is the biggest first problem to actually making that happen,” says Pedlar. She’s optimistic the solutions are out there.
Pedlar is encouraging more collaboration and is inviting organizations and individuals to meet and come up with solutions together.
She says this new, renovated shelter won’t address the needs of everyone, and it will reach capacity, with people being turned away. Pedlar told Owen Sound council the $500,000 from the federal government only goes so far and feels ultimately there should be a purpose-built shelter constructed.
Grey County also operates a repurposed motel in Owen Sound it bought a few years ago as an emergency housing option with on-site supports.
Councillor Travis Dodd asked about communicating with residents and businesses in the area. There was no requirement for a public meeting on the renovation, and Dodd encouraged Safe N Sound to engage with the community in the area about the shelter’s presence in a positive way.
Floor plan, as seen in presentation to Owen Sound council July 27, 2026