“That night they put us up at the Coachman, I didn’t even sleep. I sat up all night making sure that my children weren’t getting bitten up,” Sheena Lagimodiere said.
Sheena Lagimodiere was afraid that if she reached out for help, she might lose her children.
But she also wasn’t willing to have her four kids stay another night in a motel room crawling with bugs.
“I had to go to Child Protection (Services),”said Lagimodiere in a recent interview. “They had to open a file for me and my children in order for us to get help and accommodations because the ministry refused to help us anymore.”
The family spent one night at Regina’s Coachman Motor Inn earlier this month after reaching out to the Ministry of Social Services (MSS) for assistance. She and other MSS clients are now speaking out about the motel’s conditions, saying they don’t feel their concerns have been heard by the provincial government.
Thinking back to when she opened the door to her room, Lagimodiere struggled to describe the smell of it. The mattress had what appeared to be urine and blood stains. Photos and video Lagimodiere took of the room show discoloured bedding, sheets with small holes and bugs.
“That night they put us up at the Coachman, I didn’t even sleep,” she said. “I sat up all night making sure that my children weren’t getting bitten up. There were bugs coming out left and right — roaches, bed bugs, beetles of some kind.”
She stripped the bed, put down the top sheet and tried to sleep on top of it.
“Even then, you could see the bugs coming out as soon as they smelled blood.”
The Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) said public health inspectors have received a complaint about the Coachman Inn and that an investigation is underway to “determine the extent of any public health concerns.”
“The SHA will work with the business owner to ensure any health issues are resolved,” stated an emailed response from the health authority, which noted the complaint was lodged on July 11 and an inspection took place the next day. The details of that inspection were not provided by the SHA.
The road to the Coachman
Lagimodiere was attending the Gabriel Dumont Institute, upgrading classes with the goal of one day becoming a nurse, when a health issue earlier this year derailed that plan.
“I ended up having some seizures in February and that four days or week in the hospital, it set me back,” she explained.
She’s still waiting to hear from a neurologist about what caused the seizures that set off a series of events that eventually led her to the Coachman with her children. A file from the Office of Residential Tenancies (ORT) shows she owed $4,400 in rent as of June 2024.
“As a result of her health issues, she had to withdraw from school. While she was in school, she had a higher level of funding. She now receives a lower level of funding and is struggling financially,” reads a portion of the file. High utility costs in the winter, a loss of funding from her home reserve and her health issues were cited as reasons for how and why the arrears accumulated. At one point, Lagimodiere started the process of applying for assistance to help pay off the debt, but decided to leave instead because “she and her children felt unsafe,” according to the ORT file.
On June 21, she left her home, put her belongings in storage and through Jordan’s Principle, secured a temporary stay in a Regina hotel for two weeks while she sought more long-term housing.
(Jordan’s Principle is a federal program that is meant to ensure all First Nations children can access the products, services and supports they need. There is no fee to access the program.)
Eventually, she found herself at the Ministry of Social Services office in Regina looking for help again. That’s when her family was sent to the Coachman. They stayed one night before Lagimodiere looked for another place to stay, citing health concerns.
“It’s next to impossible to find housing in Regina. I’m still looking,” she said. “I’m on the wait-list for shelters.”
An emailed statement from the MSS said “if a client has a health or safety concern regarding a hotel room that we have secured, we will secure alternate accommodations.”
But Lagimodiere said she wasn’t offered another option.
“They basically told me that if I didn’t take the accommodations that they were giving me, that they could refuse to help me further,” said Lagimodiere. “Go away, basically, is what they said. That’s what I felt like they were saying.”
NDP social services critic Meara Conway saw first hand how Lagimodiere’s youngest child was “ravaged by bedbugs.”
“A lot of these places where people are being put up are unfit,” Conway said in an interview Thursday. “They’re unacceptable.”
While Child Protective Services (CPS) is administered through social services, it is usually for situations of child abuse and neglect, which is why turning to them for help came with feelings of stigma and fear for Lagimodiere.
“I was scared to go to them for help,” she said.
“I’m a mom with no criminal record, no drug addictions,” she added. “I wasn’t able to get help from the ministry. I know there’s people that are in worse positions. I’m trying my best.”
CPS was able to get Lagimodiere and her family back to the hotel she initially stayed at with the help through Jordan’s Principle, and that is where she remains until she can find a more permanent home.
Lagimodiere fell on tough times, through “no fault of her own,” lamented Conway, who expressed frustration that the mother of four had to turn to CPS for help.
“She was literally advocating for better conditions for her kids, saying that this wasn’t acceptable,” said the MLA. “You’re advocating for your kid? Tough, and now we’re going to open a child protection file on you. It’s maddening.”
“When securing hotels, the ministry balances cost effectiveness, safety and availability, and expects service providers to meet health and safety requirements,” the ministry said in an emailed response this week.
Not the only one
When Phionna Cleland stayed at the Coachman, she wore a three-quarter length shirt and used rubber bands to tie down her sleeves so the bugs couldn’t crawl up. Bug bites and scratches were obvious on her forearms days after a recent stay. She says she was also sent there by the ministry, and like Lagimodiere, did not get offered alternative accommodations when she voiced concerns about the conditions of the room.
“It was pretty grim,” said Cleland, who had one of her two teenage children with her at the time.
After she says she found a needle in the room, she called a family friend to take her daughter for the night, rather than have her stay with her at the Coachman.
“It wasn’t an insulin syringe,” Cleland noted, adding that within two hours of her stay, she started itching from bug bites.
“My arms were raw,” she said. “I just can’t even imagine being there with my kids because I have nowhere else to go and being forced to be eaten alive.”
Cleland said she went to the MSS offices the next morning, having spent all night awake sitting on surfaces in the room that could be wiped down. Once there, she says she was told to “call the shelters.”
Cleland said the ministry’s claim that “alternate accommodations” will be found for clients that have health or safety concerns, did not line up with her experience.
“I was told I was on my own,” said Cleland. “We all know the government bulls**ts, but when it happens to you, it is so disrespectful.”
When asked to respond to Lagimodiere and Cleland’s accounts, the ministry replied with an email stating that it “expects service providers to meet health and safety requirements.”
“If a client has concerns about whether a hotel is meeting their needs, the ministry works to resolve the issue so that the client’s needs are met, within available resources,” the statement continued. “This process would be applied to this or any hotel to which a client may be referred for an emergency stay.”
Before Cleland ended up at the Coachman, she was seeking emergency shelter after leaving her longtime apartment because she no longer felt safe there. She has since been able to find interim housing and hopes to find new accommodations for the start of August.
She wanted to tell her story in hopes of sparking change for others who find themselves in a similar situation and might not be able to navigate the system in the way she could.
“I work. I have a part-time job and I’m on SAID,” said Cleland. “What about people that have mental health issues? Major addiction problems or are illiterate? How are they going to navigate it?”
The Leader-Post reached out to the Coachman Motor Inn multiple times for comment before being told by an employee that the owners were on vacation, and that an email would be the best way to contact them. A response was not received before deadline Friday.
