Plans for Sutherland shelter axed after Saskatoon city council passes new location rules

A proposed emergency shelter that raised concerns from some residents in Saskatoon's Sutherland area won't go ahead, after city council made a major change to where such shelters can be located.

At a Wednesday afternoon meeting, council passed a motion saying that sites for emergency shelters in the future must be at least 250 metres away from any elementary schools, whether part of the public or Catholic school system.

That means a proposed shelter at the former Fire Station No. 5 site on Central Avenue is dead. 

Administration will instead seek alternate sites that meet the new criteria, the city said in a news release following the vote.

The proposed 30-space permanent emergency shelter— which would have been run by the Mustard Seed, an Alberta-based Christian non-profit organization — was supposed to be operational by this spring. 

However, it was met with concerns from some residents, business owners and the area's city councillor about the impact of an emergency shelter in the neighbourhood.

Those concerns included worries about the proposed site's proximity to a school — Bishop Filevich Ukrainian Bilingual School, a K-8 school that is part of the Greater Saskatoon Catholic School Division — and the ACT Arena, where some Saskatoon Minor Hockey Association games are played.

Some residents also pointed to reports of issues in the Fairhaven neighbourhood, where a 106-bed shelter is located.

Ward 1 Coun. Darren Hill, who represents the Sutherland area, was among those who raised concerns. He has repeatedly talked about the effect shelters have on residential neighbourhoods, schools and businesses, saying he heard some of those concerns at a town hall meeting he organized earlier in the month. 

"At my town hall on Feb. 11, over 300 people were there," Hill said. 

"There was a seven-year-old girl that spoke, and she was concerned about her safety … walking to school, her safety about being in the schoolyard."

Council spent hours debating emergency shelters on Wednesday, including what kind of separation needs to exist between shelters and both schools and other shelters.

David Kirton, councillor for Ward 3, expressed doubts about whether now is the time to debate separation rules. He also spoke about the desperate need for emergency shelters. 

"This is urgent. I just told you the numbers of the people who are struggling to make it through a night here in Saskatoon. Those numbers continue to grow, by the way," he said.

"So it's not going away. It's still coming."

Councillors voted 8-2 in favour of the motion requiring shelters to be at least 250 metres from schools, with Coun. Kirton and Mayor Charlie Clark voting against it.

As a result of the new rules, all planned neighbourhood information sessions on the shelter proposal for Sutherland area residents and businesses have also been cancelled, the city's Wednesday news release said.