Tank: Saskatoon council exits on low note with shelter hypocrisy

Article content

Seven months ago, protecting children was deemed so important that city council voted unanimously to impose new restrictions preventing shelters from locating near schools.

That decision torpedoed plans to convert a former fire hall in the Sutherland neighbourhood into a 30-bed shelter because it was located within 250 metres of an elementary school.

Wednesday, council voted 7-4 to allow a temporary provincial shelter to be located in a former parcel depot downtown, far closer to a dance school that serves young children, a daycare and a child psychology clinic helping the most vulnerable.

Article content

Most who voted in favour — including Mayor Charlie Clark and councillors Hilary Gough, Sarina Gersher, David Kirton and Mairin Loewen — are not seeking re-election.

Coun. Zach Jeffries and Coun. Cynthia Block, who is campaigning to become the city’s next mayor and represents the downtown, also supported it.

Only Block and Jeffries, if re-elected, would be around to deal with the inevitable fallout from the shelter, which is located 250 metres from the site of a temporary shelter that closed in 2022 and was considered too disruptive.

No politician who spoke in support expressed confidence that the shelter could be made safe for the nearby agencies that serve children. City bureaucrats have proposed enhanced security and a chain-link fence to restrict access from Pacific Avenue.

The smaller size of the new downtown shelter (30 to 40 beds compared to the 75 beds in the former downtown shelter) is supposed to make us think it will be less disruptive. But far more people may congregate nearby because of the limited space inside.

Coun. Darren Hill summed it up nicely: “Where’s that consideration for youth that we had earlier this year?” Like Hill, the other councillors who opposed the downtown site — Troy Davies, Randy Donauer and Bev Dubois — are seeking re-election.

Article content

Article content

Kirton said the proposed measures to make the shelter safer made it “more comfortable” to support it. But Kirton knows how challenging shelters can be, since he cited the controversy over the Fairhaven shelter in his ward as among the reasons he’s bowing out.

Gough referred blithely to “some potential future friction” the shelter could create. Spoken like someone who will never be tasked with dealing with that “friction.”

Hill also suggested city hall had failed in “due diligence” to properly consider other options. We’re expected to believe only one viable option could be found in a city that surpassed 300,000 people last year.

Meanwhile, Regina city council on Wednesday approved a permanent shelter location for about 55 beds. Yet somehow a larger city with so many more potential options lags years behind our provincial capital. A permanent shelter in Saskatoon remains a mirage.

The homelessness crisis is dire, but that fails to justify a bad decision that highlights the utter hypocrisy of protecting children in one part of the city and abandoning them in another.

Article content

The fire department identified 683 “inadequately housed individuals” from January to mid-September. That’s nearly double the 366 identified in all of 2023 and more than triple the 221 counted in 2022.

The number of encampments found so far this year (932) is set to surpass last year’s total of 1,020. The number of neighbourhoods affected has risen to 69 this year.

And the downtown now seems doomed to suffer with the return of a shelter just as crime drops in the core. Police-reported incidents of crime through the first eight months dipped to 4,531 this year from 4,707 last year, reflecting an overall drop in crime citywide.

That’s also lower than the pre-pandemic five-year average of 4,679 through the first eight months. Crimes against the person have risen from 222 last year through eight months to 315 this year, which also reflects a citywide trend.

So one can sympathize with downtown business owners concerned about the shelter’s impact. Downtown Saskatoon spokesman Blair Chapman decried Wednesday a lack of consultation by city hall and expressed frustration with the province.

Article content

The shelter decision marked the last significant one by the current council, but it will reverberate for some time.

Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

ptank@postmedia.com

twitter.com/thinktankSK

Our websites are your destination for up-to-the-minute Saskatchewan news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and leaderpost.com. For Regina Leader-Post newsletters click here; for Saskatoon StarPhoenix newsletters click here

Article content