Saskatoon city council backs Riversdale warming centre, despite warnings
CBC
Despite warnings that establishing a warming centre next to an existing homeless shelter is a “bad idea,” Saskatoon city council forged ahead Wednesday.
Council voted to purchase a former restaurant at 325 Avenue C South in the Riversdale business district, even though it's located right next to the Salvation Army Crossroads shelter.
Major Gordon Taylor of the Salvation Army criticized the location as a “bad idea,” even as he acknowledged the need for warming spaces as winter looms.
“We’re preparing for the worst because it’s the wise thing to do,” Taylor told city council. He said his experience in Winnipeg showed him that locating too many similar services in the same neighbourhood proves to be a “disaster.”
Council heard from the city’s director of planning and development, Lesley Anderson, that an exhaustive two-year search for a warming space location had yielded only one building: the one on Avenue C South.
Property owners generally don't want to lease buildings for uses like a warming space, Anderson said.
“We continue to look for more options."
Only Coun. Senos Timon, who represents the Riversdale neighbourhood, voted against the purchase. He said families in the area feel unsafe already.
Locating the warming space near the Salvation Army shelter will create “more pressures” in Riversdale and adjacent Pleasant Hill, he said.
Timon and Coun. Robert Pearce tried to get support for a more equitable distribution of services for vulnerable people throughout the city, but that idea was defeated.
“I think we need to put the services people need in an area where they are,” said Coun. Randy Donauer.
Pearce, who was elected last year based on his opposition to a 100-bed provincial homeless shelter in the Fairhaven neighbourhood, said homeless people and those who prey on them tend to be located on the west side of the South Saskatchewan River.
However, homeless people on the east side of Saskatoon don’t want to cross the river, he said.
“I’m going to vote in favour of the purchase of this building because I don’t want to see people die this winter,” Pearce said.
In the four years Chelsey Simmonds has worked at the Eva Rothwell Centre, she has seen the need increase every year at the centre’s community food pantry.
CBC is once again looking to make the holiday season kind in Windsor-Essex.
Acute Care Alberta has extended its contract for another year with a private surgical facility at the centre of probes into health procurement and contracting.
As food bank use continues to climb across the province, front-line workers in Thunder Bay, Ont., are working to improve both food security and education.
More ads could soon be coming to Toronto’s subway system.
The driver wanted in connection with a fatal hit and run on Highway 401 earlier this week has been identified, police say.
There are mixed feelings about the proposed Grays Bay road and port project, among people who live in nearby communities.
WARNING: This story details allegations of child abuse and includes graphic content.
Provincial police in Lambton County have charged a 23-year-old man with second degree murder following a death investigation that began this past Saturday.
The Newfoundland and Labrador government is forming a working group to tackle what it calls systemic issues in the justice system, but answers or solutions could still be months away.
A woman has pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing death in a 2024 fatal hit and run in Truro, N.S., where the victim was dragged down the street, a case that went unsolved for more than six months.
A stream of people showing up to a brightly lit front porch, each holding up a bottle of wine, spirits, or beer.
Sona Lakhoyan Olivier has been excluded from Quebec’s Liberal caucus for the duration of an investigation led by the National Assembly’s ethics commissioner, the party announced Thursday.