After weeks of bone-chilling weather, some Edmonton landlords have started locking the entrance area of their buildings to keep out homeless people who are looking for a place to shelter from the cold.

Some landlords are locking the access door to apartment buzzers at 11 p.m. every night, while others have hired overnight security guards to patrol parking garages.

Gillian Menzos, the manager of the Elmhurst Apartments on Jasper Avenue, said she has been locking the doors at night to keep people from sleeping in the stairwells, but she said some tenants were upset that access to their buzzers was restricted.

“We did get some writing on our elevator doors saying, ‘Don’t lock the doors.’ …we make them aware when they actually apply to become tenants of our building that we lock the doors every night and it's for their security,” Menzos said.

“And actually, all the tenants now seem to be pleased with that and we don't have any problems anymore.”

Landlords said the point is to reduce crime by keeping out people who don't live in the buildings, but social agencies said homeless people are being unfairly targeted.

Colin Inglis, a housing manager at Boyle Street Community Services, said street people don’t want to cause trouble — they just want to warm up and get out of the cold.

"Treat me as if I'm a human being. And I think that's the first reaction is simply to greet people, not pretend they don't exist,” Inglis said.

Chris Robillard, who has been on the streets for 20 years, said he needs apartment lobbies to warm up in while he's out picking bottles in parts of the city where there aren't any shelters.

"Some people just tell you, 'You gotta leave 'cause we're gonna phone the cops,” Robillard said.

Jing Dagunan, an Edmonton resident who found a man in her apartment building lobby last week, said she's fine with people taking a moment to warm up in the lobby of her building.

“If they're not drunk, or they just want to stay there, I don't mind."

Warmer temperatures are expected to sweep across Alberta later this week, but the province has been in a deep freeze in recent weeks, with temperatures dropping as low as –46 C in Edmonton.