Regina’s permanent emergency shelter to open next summer, mayor says

Homeless people will be welcomed into Regina’s new permanent emergency shelter by the summer of 2025.

That’s according to Regina Mayor Sandra Masters, who joined the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Thursday to discuss the shelter on Halifax Street, which was approved by city council on Wednesday evening.

Masters noted that the lease with the Nest Health Centre on 13th Avenue is set to expire next summer. The Nest has been operating as the city’s temporary shelter, and currently has about 55 beds.

Listen to the full interview with Masters:

“Our lease ends on July 31 of 2025, and so we’re looking to transition during July of next year,” said Masters.

While several businesses and property owners voiced concerns about having the shelter at the Eagles Club Building on Halifax Street, Masters said finalizing a new permanent location was necessary.

Regina Mayor Sandra Masters says the new shelter is slated to open in the summer of 2025, when the city’s lease with the Nest Health Centre expires. (Daniel Reech/980 CJME)

“We’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, as it relates to searching for sites, whether it was a temporary shelter a couple of years ago in the Warehouse District, which was the first kick at it, and then the Gathering Place in the Nest, which the city is paying the lease on right now,” said Masters.

“Knowing that we’ve got a site that will be renovated and be a place where there’s no more movement or more kind of insecurity around where it stays, it stabilizes the place that is happening,” the mayor said.

Masters said the city will be looking into plans to address safety concerns and ways help businesses that are located near the shelter.

“We were looking at some other jurisdictions, based upon some of the issues that our downtown folks were dealing with, and Montreal is investigating some sort of compensation packages for things like broken windows and things like insurance premiums, but also investment in the area,” she noted.

“Maybe it’s security cameras and fencing. We’ve got the Regina Street Team that’s going to need more investment.”

Masters said there will be a balance between physical security to keep the community safe, street outreach, and alternate response officers responding to petty crime.

The mayor said it’s hard to make decisions that could have an impact on the community, but emphasized that it was important to stabilize the location where the shelter offers services, as the number of mental health and addictions treatment spaces increases.

The Regina Eagles Club is expected to move out of the building by mid-November.