Over a dozen tents have been set up outside City Hall, bringing homelessness to the front doors for city staff and council.
The camp was set up after an event last Thursday that saw community members in Pepsi Park mark the first anniversary of a motion to include funding to end homelessness as a line item in the city’s proposed budget.
“I think tent encampments are not an ideal solution for anybody; something different is,” Mayor Sandra Masters said.
Masters said while the city is working on long-term solutions, she doesn’t have an answer for short-term solutions.
“I could phone 22 mayors in the Big City Mayor’s Caucus, and all of us are in the exact same situation,” she said. “You’ll see across the country that different cities are allowing, not allowing, or not interfering in different things. We monitor it on a daily basis, make sure that folks are safer and they are well, and as well as can be in their circumstances and responded to the overdoses as they happen.”
Masters said the tent encampments and homelessness are trickle-down effects of more significant issues like drug addiction.
“The reality is that we have a situation where oftentimes folks have serious substance use disorders, which creates barriers to entry into facilities. They decline service because they are free to do what they like, where they’re at, and until we have a solution to substance use disorder, housing becomes part of the issue, but it’s not the complicating factor is drug use.”
“If someone has a solution in front of them on substance use disorder, I’d love to hear. I have lots of conversations about these things, and everyone is struggling with this.”
She said that putting those with substance abuse disorders in housing is dangerous.
“Putting folks with serious substance use disorders into homes by themselves leads to other really serious problems, leading up to and including death by themselves. They’re not going to stop using, and so without support around them, without care to that’s not the answer either.”
Tiro Mtembu, the co-owner of the Hampton Hub and a community activist, has been cooking and supporting the people at the encampment and said he isn’t surprised to see another encampment pop up.
“It’s always in front of our shops and in front of people that live in the core, so it’s actually not that surprising that people have been encamped out of in front of the YWCA for a long time, and it’s organically happened that people took to the front of City Hall. It’s not surprising since Camp Hope there have been several other encampments.”
Mtembu pointed out that it was only a couple of weeks ago that another encampment was torn down in the Heritage community.
“People have been living on the streets, maybe a little bit out of sight from some folks that are working in the city, but now it’s in their faces a little bit,” he said. “I hope that they’re willing to address the situation for those that were oblivious to what’s been going on for a long time.”
Much like the Mayor, Mtembu said that Regina is no different from communities across the country in the issues it faces.
“We’re all dealing with a housing crisis, an opioid crisis. We need all levels of government to step up to the plate and try to address this in a meaningful way. Have dialogue with stakeholders in the community to listen to what their needs are,” he said. “This isn’t one of us that has been organizing or supporting that are pro-encampment; we’re pro-housing and permanent housing, affordable housing.”
Mtembu believes the city needs to do more to hold the provincial government responsible.
“We need the municipal government to ask and hold the Saskatchewan Government accountable. We need the Saskatchewan Government to be willing to work with the Federal Government. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “If you listen to community members, they’ve been talking about this for years, and there are solutions, but it takes meaningful dialogue.”
Mtembu added that he wants the fact that there are people living at the front doors of City Hall to strike home for the city staff and councillors.
“I hope that the Mayor and the people upstairs look down and start to say that this isn’t the city that we want,” he said. “This isn’t the way that we want to treat our neighbours, and we need to address this core issue that’s plagued our communities for decades, and it’s just getting worse and worse. I hope that the city looks down from those windows and says, wow, this is out of hand. We need to step up. We need to do more.”
Masters said that Fire and Protective Services will continue to check on people’s safety.
