Saskatoon city council’s last big decision of this term to approve a downtown shelter site shows hypocrisy when it comes to protecting children.
Seven months ago, protecting children was deemed so important that city council voted unanimously to impose new restrictions preventing shelters from locating near schools.
Only Block and Jeffries, if re-elected, would be around to deal with the inevitable fallout from the shelter, which is located 250 metres from the site of a temporary shelter that closed in 2022 and was considered too disruptive.
The smaller size of the new downtown shelter (30 to 40 beds compared to the 75 beds in the former downtown shelter) is supposed to make us think it will be less disruptive. But far more people may congregate nearby because of the limited space inside.
Gough referred blithely to “some potential future friction” the shelter could create. Spoken like someone who will never be tasked with dealing with that “friction.”
Hill also suggested city hall had failed in “due diligence” to properly consider other options. We’re expected to believe only one viable option could be found in a city that surpassed 300,000 people last year.
The homelessness crisis is dire, but that fails to justify a bad decision that highlights the utter hypocrisy of protecting children in one part of the city and abandoning them in another.
The fire department identified 683 “inadequately housed individuals” from January to mid-September. That’s nearly double the 366 identified in all of 2023 and more than triple the 221 counted in 2022.
The number of encampments found so far this year (932) is set to surpass last year’s total of 1,020. The number of neighbourhoods affected has risen to 69 this year.
That’s also lower than the pre-pandemic five-year average of 4,679 through the first eight months. Crimes against the person have risen from 222 last year through eight months to 315 this year, which also reflects a citywide trend.
So one can sympathize with downtown business owners concerned about the shelter’s impact. Downtown Saskatoon spokesman Blair Chapman decried Wednesday a lack of consultation by city hall and expressed frustration with the province.
The shelter decision marked the last significant one by the current council, but it will reverberate for some time.
Phil Tank is the digital opinion editor at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
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