REGINA - It’s a yes vote to the proposed permanent emergency shelter for 1600 Halifax Street.
Council voted 9-2 in favor of the motion for the permanent shelter location at what turned out to be a long Regina council meeting on Wednesday.
The lengthy motion included several provisions, including approving a lease of 1600 Halifax Street to Regina Treaty/Status Indian Services who would operate the emergency centre there, and to facilitate borrowing of $3 million in a forgivable loan from Saskatchewan Housing Corporation for the purchase of the building. Also included was the direction to consult with stakeholders and affected business within 250 meters of the shelter to develop a neighbourhood maintenance compensation program, something that had been tracked on to the main motion at Executive Committee the previous week,
This would replace the shelter at The Nest whose lease ends at the end of July, 2025.
This was another attempt at approving a permanent shelter location after council voted 6-5 in June against the proposal for 1420 and 1440 Albert Street. Despite similar neighbourhood concerns about crime and vandalism at the Halifax Street location, councillors ultimately voted in favour with relatively little opposition.
Following the delegations, council heard once more from administration officials who pointed to the benefits of the Halifax St. site. Appearing remotely, Regina manager for real estate Keith Krawczyk said they were looking for something that was the right size that contained a kitchen, washroom and meeting rooms, and this building provided all of those items.
Overall, there seemed to be consensus from the majority on council to settle on a shelter location once and for all. Councillor Dan LeBlanc called this was a “good news story” as he announced he would be one of the votes in favour.
In the end, only two councillors voted no. Councillor Landon Mohl said he was for a permanent shelter, but opposed to a location.
Councillor Terina Nelson cited the impact to businesses in the area as her reason for voting no.
“These are hard working people who are paying taxes, ridiculous amounts of taxes,” said Nelson. “I can’t and I will not put the safety of the people in this community, these businesses, our taxpaying citizens … I can’t do it.”
Nelson also voted no to the permanent emergency shelter - Saskatchewan Housing Corporation borrowing bylaw for the purchase of the building, meaning that bylaw only made it through two readings and will come back to the Oct. 9 meeting for final approval.
Delegations express views both for and against shelter location
Prior to the vote, council heard from a long line of delegations consisting of both homeless advocates in support of the shelter, as well as several residents and business who expressed concern about the shelter location.
Several individuals said they had attended a public information session put on by the city on Tuesday night, and a number of them were critical of what they heard there.
Crystal Pierno of LK Auto Collision described the meeting as “quite rushed where we didn’t receive any of the answers we had asked. It was simply to voice our concerns with no real response from anybody who attended.”
“I attended the information session last night and heard numerous concerns from residents in the area, seniors, business owners and those involved in CBOs,” said Sandra Archibald of Arch Transco Ltd. “There were few answers.”
Dan Turgeon, representing Town and Country Plumbing and Heating, felt the information meeting “hardly represent the spirit of a 7-0 unanimous vote” the previous week at Executive Committee.
He repeated his call to “introduce a motion to table” the motion, as “much more work and consultation must be completed on this vote of significance.
On the other side, homeless shelter supporters such as Florence Stratton spoke in favor of a permanent shelter while also taking the opportunity to criticize “NIMBYism - not in backyard” comments at City Hall.
“NIMBYism is a form of discrimination against unhoused people,” she said.
“It must be incredibly difficult playing NIMBY whack a mole,” Shawn Koch told councillors, who described the city as “one big NIMBY.” He didn’t want to see the issue kicked to the next council. He also had a message to business and property owners: “Is your business or your property worth a human life? If the answer’s yes, how many?”
Speaking to reporters after the presentations by delegations, Councillor LeBlanc made known his frustrations that the houselessness issue in Regina had been allowed to reach this point. He pointed to the city’s and society’s “collective neglect of the issue” over the years.
“The chickens have, and are in a serious way, coming home to roost,” said LeBlanc. “Which is, if you don’t address the causes of houselessness and social disorder, it ends up in all of our neighbourhoods. And it’s really complicated to solve on a piecemeal basis.”
Masters not surprised by margin of vote in favour
In speaking to reporters following the meeting, Mayor Sandra Masters was pleased with what transpired.
"I think you saw pretty good support from council for it. We had made a commitment in January 2023 that we would allocate that provincial and federal funding of $3,000,000, plus the province has agreed to $3 million in renovations in addition to that bonus ICIP money that we've received. I think council was supporting it because we wanted to make sure we got done this term, so that the renovations can get underway. There's clearly still a lot of work to do in terms of some of the amendments, but... we trust RT/SIS (Regina Treaty/Status Indian Services Inc.) in terms of what they do inside will design it appropriately, but we'll look at the community safety element around to make sure that's properly funded, as well as addressing some of the concerns of the business community in the area."
When asked if she was surprised by the final 9-2 vote, Masters was not.
"No, I actually wasn't. Again, I think that council made this commitment, we understand the need, we understand the need for the permanency of it. Ideally, you don't want to build shelters - we want folks to be moving through that system. But I think council really wanted this matter settled, so that we knew what was going to happen in July of next year -- that there was something stable and assured and that transfer could happen. "
