‘Unsafe conditions:’ Masters addresses issues caused by encampment

The lawn around Regina City Hall may no longer look like a campground by Friday afternoon.

Mayor Sandra Masters told Gormley the tents at the homeless encampment are to come down weeks after they went up because bylaw enforcement requires the co-ordination of multiple agencies.

“Getting multiple-agency agreement has not been forthcoming for reasons that are rooted in case law that has existed sometime over the last two to five years around other homeless encampments throughout the country,” she said.

If the City of Regina was to give notice of possible bylaw enforcement, it would need assistance to deal with any issues that may arise, like people refusing to leave, Masters added.

“There (are) different arguments behind the scenes about how that case law may or may not apply,” she said. “It has not been litigated in Provincial Court here in the province of Saskatchewan.”

The mayor said people from the Ministry of Social Services, Regina Fire and Protective Services and many community-based organizations who handle social issues year-round have been on site.

“There’s kind of this fragile ecosystem of how street outreach workers go out and build relationships and it takes kind of a bit of time to build those relationships and so this has created kind of an interruption in all of that,” Masters added.

She said the people occupying the lawn around City Hall are incredibly vulnerable due in large part to substance use disorder, addictions and mental health issues.

Looking back to when the tents were first erected in mid-June, the mayor said her initial frustration was the fact that protesters who already had homes were putting up tents.

“We know that when you concentrate this type of behaviour… it starts to escalate … There’s always going to be safety concerns … There’s going to be violence and predatory behaviour by others,” she said. “That’s pretty much what happened over the ensuing weeks.”

According to the mayor, the encampment has cost the city $50,000 so far, with damage to the lawn and the facilities themselves not yet being tabulated.

Masters added many private businesses downtown have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on vandalism issues and hiring extra security forces.

“The issue of folks being out and using drugs or having psychosis or mental health issues has created just unsafe conditions in lots of ways overnight in back alleys and in buildings and what not,” she said.

There are resources available to those experiencing homelessness, but many people can’t access them because of issues regarding substance use, the mayor noted.

“We have a number of individuals in the city who are banned because of behaviour or violence against workers and so there seems to be no solution to that particular issue,” Masters said. “If we can connect folks to services, we can connect them to shelter space or housing and income assistance. I think that’s ultimately the goal.”

Masters said she’d like to see people put on a pathway toward becoming stabilized and safe in a more independent fashion.

A media conference by volunteers and concerned citizens is set for Friday at noon at the courtyard in front of City Hall.