New city council makes increasing winter day shelter capacity its 1st priority

As his action item as Edmonton's mayor, Andrew Knack has made a motion to spend $1 million on day shelter space. CTV News Edmonton's Jeremy Thompson reports.

Edmonton’s new city council is targeting safety and homelessness as its first action items.

Mayor Andrew Knack’s first motion as mayor on Monday was for the city to allocate $1 million from the Community Safety and Wellbeing grant fund to create more day shelter space.

Knack, who was elected mayor on Oct. 20, asked council for permission to make the motion without the typical notice required so it can happen faster as the weather becomes colder. It was unanimously approved.

Staff from the mayor’s office recently met with the chief of staff for Jason Nixon, the province’s community and social services minister, to talk about what the spaces could look like, where they could be and what role the province could play in their creation.

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“We know the provincial government has significantly increased the number of shelter spaces in the last few years, which was a positive,” Knack told media after city council’s morning session, referring to the move to increase emergency shelter capacity space, including some around-the-clock access.

He said many shelters still don’t accommodate people during the day, however.

“We need to fill an immediate gap that we know exists, which is those day shelter spaces, and we want to work with (the province) on how we can further enhance that increased number of shelter spaces they created to make them even better than they are right now,” he said.

Knack – who centred his mayoral campaign on making the city safer, more affordable and better at keeping up with population growth – said he hopes the commitment of city money will inspire matching contributions from the federal and province governments or at least some amount of funding.

The mayor, who is hopeful the day shelters can be set up before winter weather settles in, says there are more than 5,000 people living on Edmonton’s streets. Encampments, safety and homelessness are issues every city councillor heard about from Edmontonians during the election campaign.

Mike Elliott, who is new to city hall after being elected to replace failed mayoral candidate Tim Cartmell in Ward pihesiwin, said during Monday’s council meeting that safety and fear of downtown “was brought up time and time again,” while council newcomer Reed Clarke of Ward Nakota Isga, Knack’s former ward, wondered how the city can “have proactive approaches on that in terms of community policing, and social agencies that support people?”

Returning Coun. Aaron Paquette told CTV News Edmonton that visible homelessness is bad for the city’s image and economy.

“Would I rather this wasn’t coming from Edmonton’s funds to do a provincial job? Yes,” Paquette, who was re-elected to a third term representing Ward Dene, said on Monday. “But am I in support of doing it because the need is clear? Yes.”

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Jeremy Thompson