The Municipal District of St. Stephen has voted in opposition to a motion to relocate and remove the shelter outside of the municipal boundaries..
Coun. Marg Harding made the motion at Wednesday night’s meeting – citing concerns for the residents living near the shelter.
It was defeated two to five, with Harding and Coun. Brian Cornish supporting the motion.
Coun. Joyce Wright said she couldn’t support the motion for two reasons, including the fact council had voted in favour of a municipal plan and zoning bylaw that had identified sites more suitable for the shelter.
“It needs to be walkable to groceries, to services, and if you move it outside our boundary, that is not something I could ever support,” she said. “They are citizens of our community, regardless of what we think of behaviours and actions, they are somebody’s child, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother.”
Coun. Emily Rodas said she agreed that things are not working in its current location. She said she would support the community and operator being at the table to see where it goes in the future.
“I don’t even know if we have the authority to make these kinds of decisions,” she said.
Alex Henderson, the senior planner for the Southwest New Brunswick Service Commission (SNBSC), said the new municipal plan and zoning bylaw do address the shelter’s location.
“In your plan, in your bylaw, you have two sites that are pre-zoned that have been part of the community information sessions, they have been available publicly to review, and those two sites have been zoned for potential emergency shelter, but with conditions.”
Schedule E of the Zoning Bylaw, known as Z-4, specifically outlines Special Institutional Use Overlay (O-SIU) which are for emergency shelters.
“It zones a portion of the rear yards of two government-owned institutional properties inside of the urban service boundary,” Henderson told The Courier. “It would permit the development of a future emergency shelter on these sites subject to conditions that may address potential land use conflicts.”
Those conditions, Henderson explained, are a tree buffer around the lot line, a privacy fence and 24/7 site supervision.
He said it means the current shelter is legally non-conforming with the zoning bylaw – otherwise known as grandfathered in because it already existed. It limits the development of the current shelter on 9 Main Street until it conforms to the new bylaw.
Others were supportive of the motion.
Coun. Brian Cornish said he felt Harding was on the right track.
“Representing the rural area, basically, we don’t want drug addicts in the rural area any more than you do in the urban area,” he said.
Cornish suggested the task force distinguish those who are homeless from those who are facing substance abuse disorder – saying they should be in treatment and “if not, they are incarcerated.”
“I don’t know if I would classify this as homeless, Marg, I don’t know what the word is, undesirables,” he said. “The bottom line is where we ship them to, what we do with them … we don’t really want this activity in the rural area either.”
Harding echoed her feelings of support for those living around the shelter.
“I’m bringing this forward because I feel really sorry and upset for the people who have to live in this area,” she said during the meeting. “Yes, these people are vulnerable, but if they’re vulnerable why can’t they behave themselves.”
She proposed a change of operator might be needed. The shelter is currently operated by Neighbourhood Works Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to help those who are unhoused.
“I think this task force will be on the right road, it’s Christmas time, and they don’t want to be looking at this [expletive].”
The Courier reached out to Neighbourhood Works and is currently awaiting a response.
It comes after a committee of the whole meeting that sparked debate between the public and the local government over the presence of the shelter on 9 Main Street.
Residents said they’ve experienced a reduction in their quality of life living next to the shelter and made three demands of the council, including relocating the shelter, the creation of a public safety task force with all levels of government and the community, and enforce the municipal bylaws.
There are limits to bylaw enforcement, according to Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Sean Morton, who added during that meeting the limit of their authority stops at private property.
The Minister responsible for housing David Hickey said the concerns around the shelter in St. Stephen are understood by the provincial government.
“Eliminating the shelter is not going to eliminate the problem in St. Stephen,” he said, speaking to The Courier. “We have a massive humanitarian crisis in the community, and we need to address it.”
He said addressing it means providing the type of housing that is supportive enough to keep people from returning to a state of homelessness, something he said the government has not done yet.
When asked about whether the Liberal government would work with St. Stephen to move it to the two pre-zoned areas of the municipality, Hickey said “everything is on the table.”
“To actually see the end of a need for a shelter in St. Stephen is my main priority, and it means making sure that we’re building the continuum of housing to not only get people off, get people out of a tent and into a shelter, but get them into a permanent, supported unit that actually sees something change in the community,” he said. “If we just simply move it, we’re just moving the problem to a different part of the community.”
He said the council in MDSS knows the most about what it needs from the provincial government in order to make meaningful change in the community.
“We need to make sure that we are offering housing beyond the shelter, so that the neighbourhood can actually see less use of the shelter, [a] more long term strategy, and can actually see that end in their community, which we have not given them to date.”
