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The federal government will pitch in $4 million to help fund the replacement of a men’s emergency shelter in downtown Edmonton.

After an election pledge of $8 million toward the $16-million replacement of the Herb Jamieson Centre, Premier Jason Kenney said Friday the provincial government needs only to contribute half that amount with the new federal government help.

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Kenney said he made the pledge during the 2019 provincial election after touring the “dilapidated” old shelter and hearing of the Hope Mission’s success in attracting private donations for the project.

“Hope Mission over these last nine decades has grown to provide loving care, and not treating people as anonymous clients, but as human beings possessed with the inviolable dignity created in the image in the likeness of God,” Kenney said Friday.

The 1954 Herb Jamieson building, at the corner of 105A Avenue and 100 Street, had space for about 300 men. Inaccessible by wheelchair, often overcrowded, with inadequate washrooms and in poor condition, the old building closed on Dec. 31. Since then, staff and volunteers at the Hope Mission’s main building, across the street, shuffle tables and beds around the dining hall every day and night to accommodate up to 540 men who need a place to sleep.