Minister promises new shelter for Summerside as residents call for more housing

Residents spoke emotionally about housing and homelessness in Summerside during an open house in the western P.E.I. city Wednesday night — with some saying they're worried the problem continues to get worse.

Dozens attended the meeting at Credit Union Place. It was set up by Mayor Dan Kutcher's task force on attainable housing, created earlier this year to find solutions to the city's housing woes.

"[The task force] was given a six-month timeline to do that, and they're ... five months into it," Kutcher said.

"We're trying to make sure that we're not being just the best here on P.E.I., but we want to be a national leader on this."

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The mayor said the point of the open house was to get feedback from the public while also presenting what the task force has accomplished so far.

But some Summerside residents told CBC News too many promises are being made while people are still struggling.

Robert Wall has faced eviction a couple of times at the motel where he lives. He said the city needs to do more to help.

"City council needs to sit down with people [who] actually know what they're going through and they need to come to an agreement pretty soon," Wall said.

He said monthly rents for any new units need to be kept low, "maybe $500 to $600 that people can afford."

Jody Sentner, manager of the LifeHouse emergency shelter and a member of the task force, said people don't quite realize how big the problem is in Summerside.

"There is a lot of hidden homelessness," she said. "On a daily basis, we get calls [from people] that we have to turn away because we're at capacity, or refer to other shelter services."

'We can't develop the way we've done for decades'

Housing Minister Rob Lantz said it was encouraging to see the work the Summerside task force is doing.

"It's really sort of the front-end piece of their review of their whole official plan, very similar to what's happening in many municipalities," he said. "They're looking at new policies around land use and density and streamlining the processes for development.

"They've done a lot of good analysis on the situation on the ground here, what needs to be done."

Lantz said governments must change planning policies, including looking at the types of housing that's permitted.

"We can't develop the way we've done for decades and expect people to be able to afford it," the minister said.

Jen Du, general manager of the Flourish Development Group, said Summerside's old bylaws on density and zoning need to be updated to address the issue of housing supply.

"It's kind [of made] things a little bit difficult," she said. "They're working on that."

A project Flourish brought forward that would have added about 600 apartments in the Greenwood Drive area was unanimously voted down by Summerside council in July.

The company is still working on a decade-long plan to build about 400 units in the area, Du said.

Province needs to act, Opposition says

Liberal MLA Gord McNeilly said Summerside needs more support from the province. He said speeding up permit approvals would help, as would more financial support for projects.

McNeilly said it's important to react quickly now. 

"For example, there was a hotel for sale in the area, I suggested to the minister, 'You should have purchased that.' ... That hotel has since been sold," he said.

McNeilly also questioned the delay in creating an emergency shelter for people currently living in tents. 

Emergency shelter coming

Lantz said the province will help set up some kind of temporary low-barrier shelter in the city soon, with details of the exact plan coming in the coming weeks. 

"The wheels are already in motion," he said. "I've talked to the mayor again here tonight about what it will probably look like. We now have to settle on where a location will be."

The minister said it hasn't been decided whether the shelter is going to be made out of modular units, like the Park Street Emergency Shelter in Charlottetown. 

Lantz said details need to be ironed out and the province will likely have to find a non-governmental organization willing to operate the shelter on a contract, but the goal is to have it set up by the winter.

He said improving P.E.I.'s housing situation is going to require work from all levels of government.

"We've all come to a realization that this is a crisis of national proportion," the minister said.