SPC to hear about issues impacting shelter capacity
By Lethbridge Herald on June 15, 2023.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
An individual stands out in the rain early Wednesday morning in the downtown core. An SPC today will hear a report on the issues facing efforts to increase shelter space in Lethbridge.Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
Several issues impact the ability to increase shelter capacity here, the Cultural and Social Standing Policy Committee of city council will hear this afternoon.
The committee meets at 1:30 p.m. in council chambers and consists of councillors Mark Campbell, Jenn Schmidt-Rempel, Jeff Carlson and Nick Paladino.
Andrew Malcolm, general manager of Community Social Development, is scheduled to make a presentation to the SPC.
In his report, Malcolm states that “despite a great deal of discussion around the need to increase shelter capacity in the community and several recent unsuccessful efforts to do so, the demand on shelter beds has outpaced supply in our community. Through analysis, the City has identified three major restrictions that have impacted the ability to increase supply. While any one of these restrictions may be difficult enough for an applicant to overcome, the reality is that often all three are typically stacked, compounding the challenge at hand.”
Those three restrictions include:
* Lack of available and appropriately zoned land to purchase, develop or redevelop.
• Access to funding.
• Availability and willingness of operators.
Lack of property is one of the first hurdles organizations face when developing social services here, says Malcolm’s presentation. In Land Use Bylaw 6300, no land use districts exist that allow ‘shelter’ as a permitted use and only two districts exist where ‘shelter’ is a discretionary use, those being Downtown Commercial and Public Building.
“This typically means that an organization wishing to develop a shelter in Lethbridge will have to either go through a contentious rezoning process, or likely have their discretionary development appealed – all of which creates uncertainty both operationally and financially. Lastly, even if a property is properly zoned, it must be available at the right moment for lease or purchase,” says the report.
Access to funding is a two-fold issue, says the report, with organizations having to find capital funding for their projects and then operational funding to sustain their activities.
“Without upfront government funding commitments, organizations will see the development of additional shelter capacity as risky. The City does provide capital funding to housing projects along the entire housing continuum through the Affordable Housing Capital Grant; however, the City has historically not provided operational funding to housing providers in the community,” the report states.
The report says development and operation of shelters is often a contentious topic with members of the community having varying and opposing views on the subjject.
“Because of the rapid rise in visible homelessness throughout the country, the topics of homelessness, encampments, substance use and more have seen an increased focus by the public. Developing and operating a shelter is often a politically complicated endeavour that includes a large amount of reputational risk for organizations. Because of this reputational risk, organization’s may be hesitant to develop or operate a shelter as they might experience slander and defamation as a result of going through the rezoning and/or appeal process,” says the report.
There are ways the municipality could reduce barriers including by increasing the number of parcels of land that allow shelters as a permitted use via amendments to the land use bylaw, which would decrease uncertainty for developers of shelters and provide clear direction on where such facilities are appropriate.
The report notes that even if appropriately zoned land exists it must be available at the right time so the City could look “to actively bank land for infill and redevelopment purposes for a variety of short, medium, and long-term opportunities including shelter and social service opportunities.This provides the opportunity for the City to lease properties and/or negotiate the sale of strategic properties to facilitate shelter development.”
Future funding through the Affordable and Social Housing Capital Grant could be used to incentivize development of shelters, says the report.
These three strategies are recommended by CSD.
Two strategies that aren’t recommended are providing ongoing funding for operations which “can be costly and risky for a municipality and could set a precedent for funding other social operations” and taking on ownership and operation of housing of all forms which includes shelts.
“This would result in considerable ongoing capital and operational costs
including considerable additions of full-time employees to manage increased workload,” adds the report.
The report says no single reason exists why the numbers of people experiencing homelessness has increased in the last four years by nearly double.
Some potential reasons are the opioid crisis, inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic and cost-of-living.
And while numbers of homeless have increased, shelter capacity has not changed since the early 2000s – there is an average shelter capacity in Lethbridge of 157 beds, which means based on the 2022 Point-in-Time count, there is gap of about 270 beds in Lethbridge.
The Blood Tribe Department of Health shelter has 125 beds, YWCA for women and children 24 and Wood’s Emergency Youth Shelter has eight.
27-26
After watching Council June 13th discuss the encampment issues and touching on some of the downtown issues I am very concerned.
By increasing shelter space we will increase the issues on our streets by attracting more people to the area, especially by those other communities that like to dump their homeless and problematic people on us.
We have been brainwashed into allowing people to hang out all night committing crimes on our streets, taking over Galt Gardens and destroying a once beautiful park, hanging around business doorways all night, tagging walls and doors, leaving piles of garbage when they leave, if not piles of bio-hazards such as fecal matter/vomit, urine right in the doorways . . . by calling them the city’s most vulnerable. Seriously???
If they can figure out how to survive on the streets, break and enter, steal, etc., they can figure out how to work and pay rent. I am not talking about the truly homeless, that for reasons not in their control, they ended up homeless, but the ones who refuse to follow the rules at the shelter so are not allowed there until they respect the rules that are there to protect and respect all parties.
The encampment strategy was great and has worked well but it needs to be backed up by laws been enforced which are there to help it work as intended.
Complaints were heard that now the encampments are shutdown the people are on the streets hanging out in front of business doorways all night . . . laws are already there to end that as well, but it appears there is no one to enforce those laws . . . why? We all know LPS is understaffed and needs more manpower, but is there no one, bylaw officers or peace officers available who can patrol at night to end this? Come on . . . it was expected!
Why is it the the public always has to pressure administation to act?
I know the encampment strategy will work, but there needs to be enforcement of the laws over night to support it.
If people refuse to obey basic rules to stay in the shelter, and stay on the streets and in Galt Gardens all night so they can commit crimes, why are they allowed to do so? We give them free reign to commit criminal acts by doing so and we increase the crime in our city!
It frustrates me when I hear the Deputy Chief of LPS tell Councillor Middle-Hope that these street people have always carried weapons for the past 30 years . . . well 30 years ago those criminals didn’t have the drugs or the addiction issues we see today that have dramatically increased the mental health of those individuals . . . between the drugs and their mental health you really don’t know what could set them off and the weapon come out.
It frustrates me to hear a comment as such by someone who has not lived in this community and moved from Calgary after serving there and did not see what Lethbridge was like 10-15 years ago! The other LPS member and Inspector doesn’t live in Lethbridge and lives 30 minutes away.
So, when someone steps forward and brings the safety concerns to Council who is involved with the downtown business community, who unknowingly expressed the exact concerns those of us who live downtown, work downtown and walk downtown daily have . . . then it is time we had a conversation with LPS!
I get it, they don’t want to bring fear into the community . . . guess what, polls have shown more than once that over 70% of people have safety concerns downtown . . . think about it, the Watch has a program to walk people around downtown safely in their SAFE-WALK program . . . EMS paramedics now wear body armour . . . a few weeks ago twice in one week there were gang fights across the street from where I live involving 12-15 people each time, I saw these events and heard of 2 others.
People have a right to know whether they should take precautions in the downtown core . . . it is their right as a citizen to know and if you don’t realize that then we will see lawsuits.
How did this city continue to get some of the highest crime rates on the Canadian Crime Index?
Now . . . with all the issues in Galt Gardens they are building playground for children, where addicts take over the park at night and will be in and around the playground equipment . . . lets get the city administration’s kids down there every morning to enjoy that playground . . . prove it! Put your kids health to the test! There have been many stories of kids who got pricked by syringes in parks already and the long road after, which included injections and bloodwork needed.
Galt Gardens is the epi-center of the issues and never should have had playground built there until the issues were resolved!
Start enforcing the laws! If these people don’t want to obey the laws and refuse to follow rules to be housed then they should be encarcerated for their crimes like the rest until they feel they can comply with the rules the rest of us have to follow.
What we are doing is slowly moulding a group of people that feel it is acceptable to commit crimes by not having any deterents . . . everyday I watch one of the people who have hung out all night in front of businesses go through parking lots trying car doors to see if they unlocked, while looking to see what valuables are in them.
We do not have to accept this! How can Council act to protect our citizens when police leadership are telling Council it is safe downtown and criminals have always carried weapons? I am frustrated with this and I will be voicing those concerns!
Many of us downtown who see the issues everyday, constantly do know what is going on and when Council listens to LPS making these statements it is calling us all liars!