After rejections from three potential landlords, Moncton’s Salvus Clinic is moving into a storage facility.
The downtown community clinic, a full wraparound community health centre that provides medical care, housing support and help navigating community services, has suspended all in-house operations.
The clinic has been searching for a new home after receiving an eviction notice earlier this year at its location at 22 Church St.
“I’m feeling very frustrated,” said Salvus Clinic executive director Melissa Baxter.
“I would never have assumed in a million years that we would get to this point. When we first received our eviction notice, I thought, ‘Oh, well, here we go. This is too bad. However, we need a new space, we’ve grown out of our space,'” she said.
“I thought we would find a location within a few months … and at this point, it’s frustrating, it’s devastating and it’s shocking that we have not been able to find a location to operate a medical service.”
People know they can come here when they have nowhere else to turn. And we’re not going to be there to open that door.- Melissa Baxter, executive director Salvus Clinic
The clinic opened its doors in 2007 and served a few hundred people at first. Now, it has 4,200 patients annually, said Baxter.
The clinic is also used by more than 250 people as an address to receive their social assistance cheques.
Baxter said for patients of the clinic, there is a lot of disappointment and anxiety about where they’re going to receive primary health care.
The clinic’s mobile health unit — a van fitted with an exam room, a counselling room and supplies — will still be going to shelters and other locations, and the organization is going to try and bring it out more often, said Baxter.
But this unit only accounts for about 500 patients since beginning in July and is primarily for those living in shelters.
Since the eviction notice, the clinic has had a few extensions on the lease while they searched for a new home.
They looked at 10 to 15 locations but only three of them were suitable or could have been made suitable, she said.
All three offers made by the clinic were rejected by the landlords.
At this point, Baxter said anything is a viable option and the clinic has had discussions about breaking up the team and operating out of multiple sites.
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In the meantime, she said the clinic will be in contact with patients to advise them about next steps and will try to provide telephone appointments where possible.
With some services still continuing, all 24 staff will stay employed, with some pivoting to work from home, said Baxter.
Baxter said she hopes a landlord out there will hear about the clinic’s situation and reach out with a space it could use.
But if that doesn’t happen, she doesn’t know what is going to happen to the clinic’s patients and others who drop by.
“We are not a walk-in facility, but we essentially operate as a walk-in,” she said.
“People know they can come here when they have nowhere else to turn. And we’re not going to be there to open that door.”
With files from Maeve McFadden and Information Morning Moncton
This story was originally published in CBC News on Oct. 25, 2023.
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