Homelessness
Saint John’s By-Name List currently includes 437 people experiencing homelessness, 246 of them long-term, per HDC’s Coordinated Access System. The number has more than tripled since 2021. Housing First works when supportive housing integrates: spread out across the city. So people can live in real neighbourhoods, not in pockets of concentrated poverty.
Where I stand
Homelessness is the symptom of a broken system. But it is a symptom we cannot ignore while we work on fixing the underlying causes. People are sleeping in tents in our city tonight. There might be someone who doesn’t wake up tomorrow morning. 38 deaths might have been prevented last year, if we acted faster.
Housing First works. And that’s what the city started doing. But not fast enough. And not in a very friendly way. Green zones didn’t offer enough transitional housing. And red/yellow zones were just a thinly veiled ban on sleeping on the street.
To help with the immediate urgency, we have to continue to build, at every level: bridge housing, mini homes, social housing. Until those units are not available in sufficient numbers, we have to prioritize supportive housing for those who really need support. And for those who just need a roof over their head: use campsites, master leasing, rent out vacant hotel rooms. People should not die just because we put a price tag on real estate.
Building units is only half the work. The other half is making sure the right person knows a unit exists and trusts the system enough to take the offer. That connecting tissue already exists: under Reaching Home, the Human Development Council runs the Coordinated Access System and one shared list across agencies. The city’s job is to back it, fund the outreach that carries offers from the system back out to the street, and require participation from any non-profit it funds. The same model should run the rest of the safety net: food, clothing, healthcare. One front door, many services.
A common question was: where would those supportive transitional units be? Which translates to “You’re not putting it in my neighbourhood, are you?”. I think everyone should be welcoming to the less fortunate. But Saint John has a huge footprint, and 246 chronically homeless people is 0.3% of the population. There is more than enough room. The geography is not the problem. We can’t put two people in recovery in Lorneville, two at the end of Red Head Road, or in Millidgeville, and expect them to show up for counselling, or addiction treatment. And we can’t have services spread out across the city either. I would aim for distributing across a limited area: a handful of units at a spot, locations spread out across the inner city: Uptown, Indiantown, Westmorland. Where public transit is accessible, and if push comes to shove, the service providers are in walking distance.
What I will push for on council
- Housing First with dignity: integrated, neighbourhood-based, not concentrated.
- Support and replicate the Sunnyside Tiny Home Community model (small, factory-built single-family dwellings).
- Support and expand HDC’s Coordinated Access System; require participation from any non-profit the city funds, and extend the same coordination model to food, clothing, and healthcare.
- Expand the Mobile Crisis Response Team so calls that do not need a fire engine do not get one.
- Prefer scale: when backing non-profits, favour direct public construction and consolidated providers over many small operators.
- Push the province for the funding and services the city cannot deliver alone.
- Look hard at the $780,000 Uptown private-security contract and what better tool that money could buy (Mobile Crisis Response Team capacity, supportive housing units, community programming).