Simcoe County set to open first official cooling centre on Monday

As the region deals with extreme heat, the County of Simcoe is set to open the doors for the first centre to help the unhoused cool off.

 The Gilbert Centre in Barrie will open the city's first official cooling centre on Monday in coordination with the County of Simcoe and the City of Barrie.

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 The centre started with a soft opening this past week, and officials said it's been a busy start thus far.

"On any given day, we see between 20 and 30 individuals in our drop-in centre, and our harm reduction drop-in centre is primarily for people experiencing homelessness and people who use drugs," said Champagne Thomson, Gilbert Centre senior manager of community outreach and fundraising. "So, for us being able to expand and have a seven-day-a-week operation and expand our hours is going to be able to bolster our programming and provide a lot of additional support to those individuals who are already accessing our drop-in."

The County of Simcoe and the City of Barrie partnered to make this service available to unhoused residents, part of the region's homelessness prevention plan.

"It brings people in to connect them with an organization that can assist them in connecting to other services, whether it's transitional housing, different food options, any sort of health care," said Craig Nixon, Barrie City Councillor. "More people actually die from what exposure in the summer than they do from the winter. So, it's more important in some ways than a warming centre."

Both the city and the Gilbert Centre said this cooling centre is crucial during summer.

"In the summertime, a lot of people don't necessarily link the heat to all the other ramifications of health, and so that looks like what exhaustion, fatigue, major sunburns, major dehydration, all of those things contribute to illness and potential death," added Thomson.

The centre will offer a variety of things for individuals to do while they cool down.

"We are very fortunate to have been funded to operate, and with that came a small pool of funds to be able to provide programming. So, that looks like art supplies, journals, things like that and being able to access a television, a computer, a telephone, trained staff that are able to provide referrals, as well as a bathroom," said Thomson.

The cooling centre is located at 80 Bradford Street, downtown Barrie, Suite 525.

These services will be offered throughout the summer until mid-September.