After over a month of searching, the Street Angels Soup Shack has found a new home.
Starting today, the mobile soup shack used to feed the homeless in Windsor will be located at the Lazarus Outreach Centre at 899 Wyandotte Street East.
Parkwood Gospel Church took ownership of the Lazarus Centre building at the beginning of March, and offered the space to the Soup Shack.
The Shack, which is a Feeding Windsor Essex program, has been operating since late November 2022, but was forced to hit the pause button on February 2 after losing their parking space.
It had been parked in the Throne of Grace Church parking lot at 405 Victoria St. but when officials said they needed to move, they relocated to New Song Church/Feeding Windsor Essex at 999 Drouillard Road for the time being.
Merissa Mills, Director and Founder of Street Angels, says it means everything to have a new location.
"Ever since we paused service, it's been weighing on me heavily. I think about it every day. 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. is when we're open, and I see people walking around and I just think 'oh, we should be serving them'. It just means everything and I want to say thank you to Parkwood Gospel, they're the ones who are allowing us to park at their building and continue service."
She says Parkwood Gospel Church reached out to offer the Lazarus Outreach Centre.
"They had said 'if you're not able to work anything out with someone else, we do take possession of the Lazarus Outreach Centre in March, and you guys would be able to go there'. And we had hoped that we would find a new location before then, but, unfortunately we didn't. So when the time came we took them up on their offer and we were able to move the Soup Shack there."
Mills adds that she's expecting an increase in numbers at the new location.
"On average the Soup Shack serves between 40 to 50 people per night. With this new location I actually think we might even have an increase in numbers. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. It's a really centralized location near the Street Help, near Water World which is the new Homeless Hub, so it's very centralized."
The Soup Shack will be open seven days a week from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. to serve hot soup, coffee and hot chocolate courtesy of Tim Hortons at Wyandotte and Crawford, and essential supplies at no cost to anyone in need.
The Harrow Rotary Club ensured the Soup Shack was moved to its new location, and the Circle of 7 have provided ongoing financial support to the Shack.