Moncton centre for children with dyslexia needs new home as building converts to shelter

A centre for children with dyslexia and a fitness group for seniors are trying to find a new location as their current home will become a shelter this winter.

Shelly Toudjian, the director of the Children's Dyslexic Learning Centre N.B., said she's been on the hunt for a new space as the Moncton Lions Community Centre will be converted into a shelter in January.

"This week would have been our last week of tutoring, and we've had to cancel everything because myself and the other volunteers are out house hunting," Toudjian told Information Morning Moncton.

Great need for shelter

New Brunswick is grappling with an increasing number of people living without shelter as the temperature continues to plummet.

Advocates have said there are more than 500 people living outside or couch surfing in the Moncton area. That number doesn't include people already in homeless shelters.

Last month, a 35-year-old man died in a public washroom after front-line workers were unable to find him a shelter bed. Advocates have said if shelter capacity isn't increased, more people could die.

Mayor Dawn Arnold previously said converting the community centre into an emergency shelter is not ideal, "but unfortunately we are in this crisis situation, which we were in last year at the same time."

And since the will not be ready until January, the city is planning to erect large heated tents with cots in the centre's parking lot to protect people from the harsh weather until the shelter is ready.

'We know we have to go. We just don't know where'

Toudjian said a shelter is an essential service and her organization is not against it.

"We realize that the city is in a bind and they need to come up with a solution," she said.

She wishes they had been given more time. She didn't know it was happening until she heard about it from a parent, who heard it on the news, she said.

"I'm not saying that we should have been given special preference, but a heads up would have been nice."

Toudjian said movers are coming in a week, but she doesn't know where they'll be going.

"We have to know by Friday whether we're packing up and putting everything in storage, or packing up to go to another location," she said Tuesday. "We know we have to go. We just don't know where."

The organization is the only resource for free tutoring for children with dyslexia that she's aware of, Toudjian said, with the group running on donations and government grants.

She said the public library was offered to them but that is a temporary solution.

When her organization moved into the Moncton Lions Centre, they believed this was going to be their permanent home.

The learning centre has posted a list of requirements on social media, asking for the community's help in finding a space.

Tricia Halley teaches fitness classes for seniors at the centre, and she's in the same position.

"The participants in my class are devastated at the news," she said.

She said "there is no question" that an out-of-the-cold shelter is needed in the area, and said that it's in fact "long overdue."

Her students, who see the classes as an opportunity to be social and stay healthy, don't yet have an alternative space.

"I have only heard rumours of where we might be going," she said.