Saskatoon mayor weighs in on controversial proposed emergency shelter in Sutherland

Mayor Charlie Clark acknowledges residents' concerns about a proposed emergency shelter in the Sutherland neighborhood, but says new facilities are needed to help solve Saskatoon's homelessness crisis.

The city plans to convert the former Fire Station No.5 on Central Avenue into a 30-bed emergency shelter. The shelter will be funded by the province, while The Mustard Seed, an Alberta-based Christian non-profit organization, will manage it. 

Nearby residents have expressed concern about the shelter's proximity to a local elementary school, a potential increase in crime and more discarded needles in the neighborhood's parks. 

Clark says the city has received similar concerns from residents when it has come to building other shelters in the city. 

"We have service providers out there trying to keep people alive right now … and if those facilities hadn't been open we would be in a much worse situation," Clark said on CBC's Saskatoon Morning. 

Ward 10 Coun. Zach Jeffires plans to put forward a motion at Wednesday's city council meeting that would prevent shelters being within 250 metres of an elementary school and within 500 metres of another shelter.

In a Facebook posting Jeffries wrote that if this motion is passed, it would end consideration of the former fire hall as the location for the new facility.

"I believe this motion will help provide more certainty and clarity in the community about future shelters and how they can best be located," Jeffries wrote.

Clark says the motion can affect the possibility of future shelters in the city.

"We can't completely block ourselves from being able to open facilities," Clark said. "We're going to just have more and more people sleeping in back alleys, at ATM machines, freezing on the streets … this is going to be a tough conversation."

Clark says placing the shelter at the old fire station is the path the city wants to take. He added there needs to be unanimous consent from council in order to discuss Jeffries' motion. 

Lack of consultation: residents

Residents were upset earlier this month when the city postponed two neighborhood information sessions because the city administration needed more time to come up with the right plan for the shelter. 

"City council went behind people's backs without any public consultation, without any studies that have been done with regards to just picking this facility as a potential homeless shelter," said Rostyck Hursky, whose children attend Bishop Filevich Ukrainian Bilingual School, which is about two blocks away from the proposed shelter location.

"We've been kind of rallying around the city to let people know that there that, again, we haven't been involved in any consultations as parents, as citizens, and decisions have been made on our behalf, on behalf of our children with regards to the placement of this homeless shelter here."

Hursky says parents are standing up for the kids' basic right to feel safe in the neighborhood where they're educated. He said he and other parents have sent letters to city council and their MLAs about their concerns.

"We will be dealing with the kind of residual spill over into the area, and our kids seeing things that they should not be seeing and experiencing things that they should not be experiencing as a result of this," Hursky said. 

Watch| Mayor says there is a need for more emergency shelters in Saskatoon

'People's lives are on the line': Mayor says there is a need for more emergency shelters in Saskatoon

9 months ago

Duration 5:21

A proposed new emergency shelter in Saskatoon's Sutherland neighbourhood is set to be discussed at a city council meeting. The plan is to turn the former fire station into a 30-bed facility but people in the area and their city councillor are concerned about the rise of crime, drugs and the shelter's proximity to a school. Mayor Charlie Clark says he hears the concerns but there is still a need for more facilities like this across the city.

Clark said it's a very challenging process to get shelters in place because they need to be converted quickly to meet the demand of the city. The city's hope is to have the new facility operational at some point this spring. 

"I understand that people would hope to have a process where you could go and have a vote in a neighborhood and determine where to locate a shelter, the way that zoning works, Clark said  

"[But] the challenge of being able to locate these [shelters] does not lend itself to that type of process, especially with the urgency that we have in our community right now."

Residents will have an opportunity to learn more about the proposed shelter and voice their concerns at two newly re-scheduled neighborhood information sessions. There will be a virtual meeting on March 11 and an in-person session on March 12.