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home / 世界杯决赛2022

how sask.'s housing gap fuels a cycle of addiction

“one of the hugest gaps we have in our community and across the province is that we don’t have housing that is available for people who use substances."

by zak vescera

dec 17 2021
read time 7 minute read
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in the summer of 2021, delbert paintednose carefully propped a box spring atop two pillars cobbled together from scrap and a recycled bed frame. this, in a back alley in west saskatoon, was the closest thing he had to home.

paintednose spent three years living in places like this, hopping between alleyways, couches and anywhere else he could find before he finally got a place of his own this fall.
it wasn’t for lack of trying. paintednose decided years ago to turn his life around and taper his substance use.
“i decided i didn’t want to be another statistic,” he said. but without housing, he couldn’t find the stability he needed to stay sober. and unless he was sober, he couldn’t find housing.

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read the entire series  here.
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delbert paintednose built the pictured structure in the summer of 2021 so he’d have a place to sleep outside.
delbert paintednose built the pictured structure in the summer of 2021 so he’d have a place to sleep outside. zak vescera / saskatoon starphoe / zak vescera / saskatoon starphoe

advocates say hundreds of saskatchewan people are trapped in that same vicious cycle, one that government intervention has so far failed to halt.

“one of the hugest gaps we have in our community and across the province is that we don’t have housing that is available for people who use substances,” prairie harm reduction associate director kayla demong said.

the result, demong said, is hundreds of people trapped out: left to camp outside , flit between shelters and couches or in housing ranging from inadequate to dangerous.

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jeannie coe, a nurse practitioner at the lighthouse, says that lack of housing is inextricably linked to harms from substance use and record overdose deaths.

“they can have recently overdosed,” coe said. “but the whole thing they’re thinking about when they talk to them is ‘where am i going to sleep tonight?’”
trapped out
paintednose, who also works at prairie harm reduction, says having a roof over his head changed his life.
“it makes me want to get better with my life because i have a place now. i have a place in society. i felt like i wasn’t wanted before,” he said.
his journey shows how far the system has to go. paintednose said something as simple as finding identification was almost impossible. id is often needed to get more id, he said, and you need id to get an apartment. when he did manage to get it, it was often stolen. “on a given day, you could lose all the stuff that you have. after a while, it becomes a part of your life,” he said. at one point, he had a doctor sign a letter attesting to who he was, but some places wouldn’t even accept that.

even when he did get appointments, he said, many landlords didn’t want to rent to someone with a history of drug use.

he said his caseworker, justine, is why he ultimately found a home.
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“i played by the rules this whole time, and it took me three years to get a house. i just about gave up … i’m glad i didn’t, and i’m glad i had someone like justine to support me,” paintednose said.
paintednose spent three years trying to find a place he could call home.
paintednose spent three years trying to find a place he could call home. matt smith / saskatoon starphoenix

demong says the growing volatility of the drug supply and changes to the province’s income assistance programs have only made the problem worse. non-profits are aware of several encampments in saskatoon parking lots, parks and near malls. in regina, a tent city cropped up a short drive from the provincial legislature.

“encampments and people sleeping rough, that’s nothing new. what we have now is a homelessness crisis,” demong said.
saskatoon mayor charlie clark likens the problem to a gigantic puzzle with many pieces required for a solution. but part of the issue is the picture of the puzzle is unclear. the city has no inter-agency system to collect and share information on the scale of homelessness. that means many people on the street bounce between agencies and government services, eventually winding up back where they started. clark said other canadian cities have data-sharing partnerships to prevent this.
“it remains too disjointed right now,” clark said. “there (are) too many policies and interventions that perpetuate a lot of the outcomes that we’re seeing.”

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the barriers mean many face limited housing options: shelters, the street or housing that is downright unsafe . in the past two years, the city of saskatoon has shuttered two properties — the former northwoods inn and suites and the prairie heights condominiums — for those exact reasons.

it has been more than a year since the city moved to forcibly close the city centre inn and suites, formerly the northwoods.
it has been more than a year since the city moved to forcibly close the city centre inn and suites, formerly the northwoods. matt smith / saskatoon starphoenix
and when people lose housing, coe said, it can be the devastating push that sends them back into using substances.
“they’ll have a slip. there’s this huge amount of stress on them now because they’re homeless. and the coping mechanism that worked for them before, it comes back to the surface as a possibility,” coe said.
between shelters and apartments 
jordan mills was sick of watching that cycle.

mills, the clinical director of saskatoon mobile crisis, realized there was a subset of the homeless population that needed more intensive support. otherwise, they would wind up in emergency rooms , police cells or back on the street. sometimes, people would get kicked out of housing for using drugs, which ultimately put them at even more risk.

“you look at all the supportive options in saskatoon, most of them are abstinence based. most of them are focused on a recovery model of care that requires abstinence,” mills said.

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that’s when he connected with camponi housing corporation, a métis non-profit organization, and sasknative rentals, and the idea for edwards manor was born.
the founding principle of the 21-suite housing complex is to reduce harm instead of punishing people for using drugs. here, residents receive clean needles, safe inhalation supplies and even alcohol, as well as mental and social support.
the result is not that people increase use, mills said, but that they gain agency over their lives. administration supervisor amanda kolinski has seen people reconnect with family members they haven’t seen in years. when tenants move in, she said, their rooms are usually hovels; “they look like a mouse has run through them,” she said. but within a few weeks, they are broom-swept clean. they participate in tenant meetings. by every measure, kolinski said, their lives improve.
edwards manor clients and program leads axl petit, david burlinguette, tammy macfarlane, bill johnston, amanda kolinski, dennis morrison and dwayne brass stand for a photo in the culture room at edwards manor.
edwards manor clients and program leads axl petit, david burlinguette, tammy macfarlane, bill johnston, amanda kolinski, dennis morrison and dwayne brass stand for a photo in the culture room at edwards manor. michelle berg / jpg
“they know that they aren’t getting evicted because we had to call the police. they know they’re safe to be here,” kolinski said.
the manor meticulously tracks incident reports, including calls to ambulance or police, and in the past year, they’ve plummeted. in 2020, kolinski estimates they had 150 reports a month; now, it’s about once a week. mills believes the manor has saved the health and justice system millions in costs.

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this form of supportive housing is something almost every person interviewed for this article agrees is needed to address homelessness in saskatoon.
“housing provides a form of stability that no other resource does. and what we see time and time again …. is that when you give someone a home, dealing with all the other things in their life becomes a lot easier and looks a lot different,” demong said.
but supportive housing is in critically short supply.

the saskatchewan housing corporation, a branch of the ministry of social services, has an abundance of empty units . as of nov. 25, 270 spots in saskatoon alone sat vacant. housing director roger parenteau said many of the existing 18,000 units across the province are unfurnished, multi-bedroom spaces made for families, not people dealing with substance use or mental health issues.

the agency’s solution, in part, has been approaching non-profits who can provide health and social supports about leasing empty units to create more supported housing.

the saskatoon tribal council has taken up that offer. saraih-dawn matthews runs the council’s sawēyihotān outreach program, an effort started last year to help indigenous people in saskatoon get off the street. the program runs a four-bed transitional home with supports for people with substance use. they’re now expanding to an apartment building owned by the housing corporation, matthews said, where outreach workers will offer less intensive supports for people moving toward more independent living.

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“there’s a path, and you can’t skip any of those pieces, because they’re all integral to that journey,” matthews said.
not every non-profit is thrilled. demong says organizations like hers don’t have the operational funding to provide services to an entire apartment building, or the financial muscle to take on the risk.
parenteau says the corporation is “open to negotiation” on how the arrangement works and that he recognizes the risk non-profits would take on.
“it’s something we need to take a closer look at,” he said.
saskatoon mayor charlie clark.
saskatoon mayor charlie clark. liam richards / saskatoon starphoenix

the federal government has recently poured capital dollars into cities across canada to create affordable housing, including saskatoon . but clark said the lack of operational funding from the province is a missing piece.

“it’s the operational funding that is needed to get that intensive case management. so that’s the dilemma here,” he said. the frustration in clark’s voice is audible when he speaks about homelessness. he struggles, he says, to summarize the complexity of the problem or the disparate pieces that need to come together to solve it.
“it’s not an issue of human failing or criminality,” clark said.
“too many of our approaches and initiatives are still built around trying to move people along, push them out of the way, or they create unnecessary barriers to getting the help they need.”

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mills said the simple — yet intricate — act of getting someone a home can change lives forever.
“when you’re homeless, you don’t have a postal code, you don’t have id. you’re essential a ghost of a person,” mills said. “when you have something like this, it’s a return to citizenship.”

correction: tammy macfarlane’s name was spelled incorrectly in an earlier version of this story. the starphoenix regrets the error.

trapped is a multi-part series reported by zak vescera which explores the toxic drug crisis in saskatchewan.
read the entire series here.
check out the latest 10/3 podcast featuring trapped here:
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