The Mustard Seed's North Flats location is set to close on Feb. 28. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

By Eli J. Ridder

IN THE COMMUNITY

‘Don’t forget about us’: Future uncertain for vulnerable users of Mustard Seed’s day services

Feb 13, 2025 | 6:27 PM

Justin was alone in a new city and needed help.

Left with nothing in Medicine Hat, he turned to The Mustard Seed about three months ago for a warm place to stay and food to eat.

Beyond his basic needs, Justin was also able to access resources at the non-profit’s daytime services at its North Flats location.

“They’ve helped me at one point get a job. They’ve helped me get my taxes caught up. Basically anything I’ve needed,” he said in an interview Thursday.

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“Just (to) try to get my life back on track.”

Justin is one of hundreds of people per month who use The Mustard Seed’s essential services at 503A Allowance Ave. Southeast.

The Seed says 275 individuals rely on mailboxes at the site for vital documents such as T5 slips. Over 100 people without a home to call their own use the location as an address for government-issued identifications.

About 150 people a month access health and wellness services at the site, including counselling and frontline first aid.

Some 350 essential items are distributed to 90 individuals monthly, too.

Those services critical to its users will come to a grinding halt at the end of February ahead of a stop work order.

The instruction to cease operations was given after the city’s planning authority denied a permit application from The Mustard Seed in January amid pressure from wary residents.

The organization is scrambling to fill the gap.

James Gardiner, CEO of The Mustard Seed, said Thursday that work is underway to figure out how some services can continue elsewhere.

“The meal service, the community that’s here, the safe place and the warm place — those things are going to end,” Gardiner said.

However, The Mustard Seed has kicked off deliberations with the City of Medicine Hat to save the mail services aren’t interrupted, the CEO said.

James Gardiner, CEO of The Mustard Seed, says the organization’s mission in Medicine Hat continues despite the challenges it faces. Eli J. Ridder/CHAT News

Gardiner added his organization is also searching for a new location where it can provide its health and wellness services.

That’s all amid a collaborative effort by the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, the Alberta government and The Mustard Seed to find a new all-in-one location for its services.

The Mustard Seed’s emergency homeless shelter on Eighth Street will continue operating as it was not part of the permit application.

While it’s a fluid situation, Gardiner said those that need The Seed’s mission remains the same.

“Our mandate is to eliminate homelessness for people and reduce poverty and work with the most vulnerable,” he said.

“And so, on a case by case basis, we’re working with people to see what solutions we can be providing.”

Justin says The Mustard Seed’s services help get lives back on track. Kevin Kyle/CHAT News

Clayton came to The Mustard Seed three or four months ago in need of support he couldn’t find anywhere else.

“I’m 63 years old. I have no back. I have no lungs. I have no heart. I can’t work, I’m toast,” Clayton said.

He relies on food, shelter and bus passes from the non-profit. Now, the future is uncertain.

“It’s scary. Where do we go?” he asked.

“We have nothing.”

If The Mustard Seed didn’t offer a warm place to spend time, grow community and find hope, Clayton said more people would be dead outside.

“We would be starving. Then we’d be freezing to death. There’d be more of us in the morgues,” he said.

Justin, too, is worried for those at risk.

“It breaks my heart, a lot of people are going to be lost,” he said.

“The help that people rely on will not be here anymore. Between the times of 6:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, we’re going to be outside.”

The Mustard Seed feeds its Eighth Street emergency shelter guests with donated food prepared in the Allowance Avenue kitchen.

A proposal to continue feeding those at the shelter by turning it into a “ghost kitchen” will come forward for consideration at a Municipal Planning Commission meeting next Wednesday.

Gardiner says that proposal must be approved.

While political and community leaders search for a new Mustard Seed location, consider the “ghost kitchen” proposal and assemble for a one-off homelessness task force, Justin asked they remember those at the heart of the issue.

“Don’t forget about us,” he said.

“We are not bad people, we’re all human. And I feel we deserve to be treated as such.”