A new 50-bed shelter in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) is expected to open sometime this month, according to the province.
Community Services Minister Trevor Boudreau says the lease has been signed, but he won’t share the location — at least for now.
“HRM is doing some safety inspections and we’re trying to get it all set up, and we’re working with the service provider,” he told reporters Wednesday. “We’ll be announcing that as soon as we can.”
Boudreau also wouldn’t name the service provider who will operate the shelter.
Asked if it will be open in November, Boudreau said, “Yeah, that is the plan. Absolutely.”
Halifax Mayor Mike Savage recently told Global News he hopes people living in tents at Grand Parade or Victoria Park will be able to stay at the shelter when it opens.
“Hopefully, those will be the folks who get the opportunity to move to that new location,” Savage said Oct. 27.
The province announced $1.8-million for three shelters — the other two in Bridgewater and Amherst — last month.
A government spokesperson confirmed Wednesday the Bridgewater shelter, which will have 15 beds, is set to open Nov. 15, while the 20-bed Amherst location opened Oct. 1.
Pallet shelters to arrive in December
Boudreau told the legislature Tuesday that the 200 previously-ordered Pallet shelters will be arriving in December, due to a nine-week turnaround.
They will offer single occupancy rooms, with bathroom and laundry units on-site. 100 of the units will be in the HRM, with the others dispersed across the province.
“As soon as we had the OK for the Pallet shelter approvals, we were moving forward with it,” he said. “My understanding is there’s a number of other jurisdictions that are also in line for it. So, that may be some of the turnaround time.”
Boudreau declined a suggestion that the provincial cabinet shuffle in September had anything to do with the timing of the order. Asked if he regretted not placing the order sooner, Boudreau said, “We moved as quickly as we could to get this order in place.”
Some people will sleep in tents all winter: Houston
Premier Tim Houston said, “Unfortunately, yes”, when asked if he thought some people would be sleeping in tents all winter.
“There are people that live rough all year,” he told reporters. “That’s a sad fact.”
But there are lots of people working on supporting homeless people, he said.
“There are a number of shelters, I encourage people to work with Community Services, work with some of the social workers, work with some of the, you know, some of the municipality representatives. We know this is an issue,” he said in Question Period.
Houston acknowledged that there’s always work to do on this issue.
“I think if you look at objectively the investments that we’ve made, the supports we put in place, I think it would be unfair to suggest that nothing has been done,” he said. “But it’s government, and there’ll always be more to do.“
Opposition critical of response
Meanwhile, Claudia Chender, the province’s NDP leader, says the government simply isn’t doing enough.
“What we hear over and over again from community advocates, from housing organizations is, ‘People are trying to take care of each other, we’re trying our best, we just need help.'”
“Nothing that the government has announced will come close to actually accommodating the number of people sleeping rough,” she said.
Both opposition parties support the idea of using vacant community centres or churches for additional shelter space in the short-term.
— With files from Alex Cooke and Megan King
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