Beware of candidates for mayor or city council offering simple solutions to Saskatoon’s homeless crisis — perfect solutions will be extremely expensive.
Saskatoon mayoral candidate Cary Tarasoff has the homeless crisis all figured out.
Tarasoff’s oh-so-simple solution is to close the existing 106-bed facility and find a new one quickly. He suggested the city can provide land and the province can build a new shelter or wellness centre or whatever you want to call it.
Amid the litany of grudges, gripes and grievances that apparently define his vision — many of which our lawyers would prevent us from publishing — Tarasoff may have stumbled upon a simple solution.
Except there are no simple solutions here. The provincial Saskatchewan Party government has shown no interest in building new facilities, which is expensive.
This provincial government will happily oblige any city that wants to assume more responsibility for homelessness, but there’s few ways to do that effectively without increasing property taxes.
Short of hiking taxes into the stratosphere and starting a Saskatoon social services department, city hall’s ability to effectively address homelessness is pretty limited — except in the most expensive way of all, through emergency services.
Closing the Fairhaven shelter would mean 100 more people on the street to join the hundreds who are already without regular shelter.
She’s probably right, but nobody wants higher taxes, at any level, to pay for it.
Yet it’s telling that someone making the switch from provincial to city hall politics is now clearly identifying the province as the one that bears responsibility for this file.
Beware of any candidate touting simple solutions to Saskatoon’s homeless crisis. It remains an easy issue to exploit, but difficult to truly solve.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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