The Saskatoon Tribal Council announced Friday that the lease on the Emergency Wellness Centre located in the Fairhaven community has been extended.
The government of Saskatchewan signed an agreement with STC for them to continue operating the facility with $4.2 million in operating funding until March 31, 2025.
Statistics were given about how many people and families have benefitted from the centre, with over 60 families being housed, 75 individuals housed, and 4,096 people served.
The council said people from 129 different First Nations communities have utilized the services at the centre.
STC opened the doors of the 415 Fairmont Dr. location in December 2022 and have been running at capacity ever since with 106 beds at the facility.
STC Tribal Chief Mark Arcand said 78 per cent of the people they serve are Indigenous, adding that he was proud to have a First Nations organization helping Indigenous people.
He said the model at centre is working, adding that the data released by the Saskatoon Police Service and Saskatoon Fire Department for an upcoming city committee meeting supported that.
“We’re proving that this model is working by moving families. Currently at our EWC we have nine families living there and 21 kids, so it tells us there’s still a need in what is going on in the homeless sector,” Arcand said.
He said they’ve also been working to transition families to the Kotowan 1 housing complex in Saskatoon.
Arcand said since they decided to stop allowing people with complex needs to access the facility, the statistics around crime in the Fairhaven community are improving.
He said there are issues throughout the city, pointing to crime stats shown in other areas of Saskatoon.
“City Park doesn’t have a homeless shelter, but they’ve got more crime rates than Fairhaven. So that tells me it’s not about the homeless people, it’s about people not wanting the facility there.”
He addressed some of the claims from the community that the upcoming report is a “conspiracy from the police.”
“We’ve got to be educated and understand that these are professional people, and we’re a professional organization. We’re not here to harm anybody’s life or disrupt anybody’s life, we’re here to help people.”
He said they’ve been working with the Saskatoon Police Service to help people and wondered where people expect the 106 people accessing the EWC to go if it got shut down, as some in the Fairhaven area seem to want.
“I understand people don’t want it in their neighbourhood but nobody is coming out with a solution.”
“It’s a city problem, it’s not a neighbourhood problem,” Arcand added.
He also addressed the rumour that crime rose 1,100 times in the Fairhaven community, saying that the suggestion did not correlate with the police stats.
“So what does that tell you? Somebody’s not telling the truth, somebody’s not being honest,” Arcand said.
“Who’s putting fear into people? We’re not.”
He reiterated that this is not an us versus them scenario, saying that coming together to help the community needs to be the focus.
Arcand said there needs to be more discussion around how to lessen the number of encampments in Saskatoon, the amount of people stuck on the street and to find ways to get people off of drugs.
The report from police and fire on crime statistics will be presented at Wednesday’s governance and priorities committee that starts at 9:30 a.m.
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