'We're back': Sask. man purchases school bus, renovates it into warmup shelter

A Saskatoon man has purchased a school bus and renovated it into an overnight warm-up shelter.

Through donations, Ralph Nicotine bought the bus for $8,000 and spent about $2,000 on the renovations.

Nicotine got inspired to create a mobile shelter, following the freezing death in Saskatoon last November.

Shortly after, Nicotine leased a school bus from a friend to use as a warmup space. After that season, Nicotine saw the need to buy his own bus so he could customize the interior.

"It's a new colour, it's a new bus," Nicotine told CTV News.

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"We're back out here with a red bus."

The bus has 12 chairs lining the side of the bus. Nicotine found having the chairs face each other is safer than the typical bus seating layout.

The red school bus is equipped with hot soup, coffee, and donated boots, jackets, gloves and toques.

Nicotine purchased the bus in Radville, Sask.

"The flooring was already in. We did the side panels and the roof," Nicotine said.

Nicotine wants to add more heaters at the back of the bus and additional lighting, to better server the city's most vulnerable during the coldest nights of the year.