Province adds $3 million in funding to keep drop-in centres open year round

WATCH: The Saskatchewan government will provide an extra $3 million in annual funding to keep Saskatoon warm-up centres open every day of the year.

The City of Saskatoon is hoping new annual funding from the province will make overnight winter warm up locations a thing of the past, and instead keep drop-in centres open continuously.

“A safe place to be, 365 days a year, that is an enormous and vital step forward for our community,” Mayor Cynthia Block said.

The province is adding $3 million in annual funding to provide drop-in homelessness services every day of the year.

In recent years, the city has had to organize quick funding agreements to get overnight warm-up locations, like at St. Mary’s Parish and at the Saskatoon Indian and Métis Friendship Centre to give people a place to sleep during the coldest winter months after summer drop-in centres typically close at the end of October.

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“It is my strong hope that this will simply be continuous, that there will not be a gap in in the services,” Block said.

Block says this dedicated funding allows the city to know there’s a plan moving forward.

“So that we don’t have we don’t have a drop-in center closing and then (for) three weeks, where do these individuals go?” Minister of Social Services Terry Jenson said.

Plans are yet to be finalized about who will run the drop-in centres, where they will be located and how the funding will be used exactly, but Block says the funding signals part of the creative solutions needed to address homelessness rather than respond to it.

“We know that that these are building blocks,” she said. “And when we build them together, we can get to the other side of the crisis that we are facing.”

The funding announcement is the latest partnership to address homelessness between the city and the provincial government in recent months.

Funding of other drop-in centres were announced earlier in the summer, as well as finalizing a site for a permanent 60-bed shelter at 170 31st Street East in August.

Station 20 West opened as a daytime drop-in centre from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m., where access to support services is also available. The White Buffalo Youth Lodge is currently operating an overnight drop-in centre for kids 16 and older, running from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Both centres are expected to close Oct. 31 with the hopes of winter locations opening Nov. 1.

Despite the city and province’s new level of cooperation, the number of people with no home continues to grow, and Premier Scott Moe says the province isn’t looking at other policy changes for social services.

“This is what we intend on using,” Premier Scott Moe said. “When you hear me talk about the strength of the Saskatchewan economy, this is what that accommodates for.”