City happy with feedback following third of four shelter consultations

Jason Kerr/Daily Herald City of Prince Albert Director of Community Development Craig Guidinger speaks to attendees at the first of four City of Prince Albert homeless shelter consultation meetings. Guidinger said City administrators are satisfied with the feedback they’re getting so far.

Public safety and location among main topics as City holds third homeless shelter consultation

The results aren’t in yet, but city administrators say they’re satisfied with the feedback they’ve received from Prince Albert’s first three homeless consultation meetings.

Residents gathered at the Ches Leach Lounge again on Tuesday for the third of four meetings. The meeting was originally scheduled for a room at the Alfred Jenkins Field House, but the City switched the location Tuesday afternoon because they were worried they couldn’t accommodate enough people.


City of Prince Albert planning and development director Craig Guidinger said that shows how important the issue is to most people.

“I just assumed—took a shot in the dark—that we’d have that many at least tonight, so it’s a good thing we moved it because we’d be pretty cramped,” he said.

Public safety and the shelter location were once again major topics at Tuesday’s meeting. Guidinger said that was a common theme for the first two meetings, so he wasn’t surprised to see it pop up again on Tuesday.

“That location is such a big one,” Guidinger said. “People are passionate about their homes in the community. Often it’s fear of the unknown, right. There’s a lot of ‘what if this happens and what if this happens and what if this happens?’ It’s really difficult to answer those hypothetical questions.

“I get that people have those concerns, but we’ve got an operator—a proven operator—in the YWCA who’s got a proven track record and no matter where the location is, I’m quite confident that the YWCA will deliver a successful shelter.”

Tamara Dunlop was one of many residents who attended Tuesday’s meeting. She lives in the Midtown area near the current Stepping Stones Shelter. She told those in attendance she has more problems with slum lords in her neighbourhood than she does Stepping Stones clientel.

“I do know, professionally, that (the YWCA) does try to be good neighbours,” she said.

As someone who lives close to a shelter, Dunlop said she’s not convinced by statistics showing how many times police are called to the area. She said there should be a comparison between Stepping Stones, and businesses like Wal-Mart and the Cornerstone Shopping Centre, when it comes to call volumes.

“How many times have the police been to Wal-Mart, and nobody in this room is afraid to walk into Wal-Mart,” she said.

“Those businesses aren’t in the room saying they want to be a good neighbour,” she added.

Prince Albert Downtown Business Improvement District co-executive director Rhonda Trusty was also on hand for Tuesday’s meeting. Trusty told those in attendance the downtown was not a good location for a future shelter.

“When I got hired on I did a lot of listening,” Trusty told those in attendance. “The impact of the homeless situation was very difficult on our downtown businesses. We had a lot of terrible negative behaviours.”

Trusty said the downtown began a pilot project to hire security to deal with negative and disruptive behaviors in the area. From 2023 and 2024, she said they saw an increase in those behaviors, and that data isn’t showing up in police numbers.

Trusty declined requests for an interview following the meeting. She also declined requests to provide further comment via email until after the consultation process is finished.

The final homeless shelter meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 30 at the PAGC Urban Services Building. Guidinger said they’ve received a lot of good feedback so far.

“I get the question lots, was this event successful, and I say, ‘well it depends on what your measurement of success is.’ For me, my measurement of success is the feedback that we get on those forums,” he said. “The question and answer period, I would caution, isn’t a real good indicator of the success of the night. We got lots of really good questions and really good answers. That’s great. I don’t want to minimize that, but really after we dive into the feedback on those forms—we probably have 100 forms to go through just for tonight—that’s when we’ll know if it was a success.”

@kerr_jas • jason.kerr@paherald.sk.ca

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