The Out of the Cold Shelter has closed

The Out of the Cold shelter at the exhibition grounds closed today. The people it served – Fredericton's most difficult to house population – will need to find somewhere else to sleep going forward.

This was the shelter's fifth location since its inception. It moves from place to place on temporary use variances. When I ran for council five years ago, another much-needed resource was operating the same way, and people were talking about it at the doors then too. The pattern is the same each time: a location is proposed, everyone knows the service is needed, and initially it's mostly welcomed. It helps people, but as it can't solve everything about homelessness, addiction, and mental health, it also brings problems the neighbourhood has to absorb: petty crime, open drug use and discarded needles, aggressive behaviour. This isn’t the fault of the agencies running the service, who are under resourced and doing what they can. Nevertheless, when the neighbours’ real experiences aren’t addressed, there’s no support for making the service permanent in that location. The variance times out, the service closes or moves again, and the slow work of connecting people to housing starts over.

Here's what I think is happening. Lasting solutions to homelessness, mental health, and addictions are difficult, expensive, and require coordination across municipal, provincial, and federal governments, plus mostly non-profit agencies on the ground. By letting things reach a crisis, governments create conditions where they can, repeatedly, do the minimum. When the stakes are always ‘life and limb,’ most people will accept a lot of disruption rather than oppose a needed intervention. So governments save money, but the costs of not addressing the need properly are pushed onto two groups: the people the service is meant to help, who get a band-aid, and the neighbours, who absorb the rest.

That’s what economists call an externality. It’s also a false economy. Fredericton spent $8.7 million last year – 5% of its budget – on responses to living rough, addictions, and mental health, but none of that spending moves us toward housing anyone or addressing underlying issues. So, the situation continues to get worse. If we can get some upstream investments right, that spending should start to come down over time. 

I've raised these points at the Planning Advisory Committee. I supported the shelter’s variance applications, but asked the committee to attach conditions that would address the problems neighbours were experiencing, such as supports for the people using the shelter and a CSSU presence in the neighbourhood. The committee approved the applications as presented. Approving the same arrangement without addressing what isn't working just sets up the next move — and here we are.

I can't tell you how many doors I’ve knocked on where neighbours have expressed frustration about their latest break-in or alarming encounter — and in the same breath, acknowledged that they're fortunate to have shelter and good health. The neighbours are worried about what will happen to those who arrive at the exhibition grounds needing overnight shelter. They're also worried about what will happen when they don’t find it. A few nights ago, I had to call police on an individual who was too late to get into the shelter. He smoked some meth, broke a few things, then started to set a fire at a business on the grounds.

Last week, Fredericton Police warned of a spike in drug overdoses: 61 calls so far this year, compared to 27 at this point last year, and 9 in 48 hours that week. Out of the Cold was a low-barrier shelter, meaning that it served people who are actively using substances. Without it, people will be using in more remote places where an overdose is more likely to be fatal.

So what should we actually do? It’s no help to simply point at a problem we can all see. Similarly, some candidates talk about strong advocacy to other levels of government, which I take to mean that we’re going to wag our fingers at them very sternly and urge them to pull up their socks. It’s fine to point out that certain issues are the jurisdiction of other levels of government – they are – but that doesn’t change the fact that those issues force action in areas that are squarely municipal jurisdiction.

We do need to engage with other levels of government, and with the agencies delivering services on the ground. We need to come to the table prepared to engage constructively and collaboratively, as partners, willing to work toward solutions and hold one another accountable. No one government or agency can do this alone. We also need to understand that in the end we don't control what other levels of government do. That doesn’t change what we’re seeing on the ground here in Fredericton. The city has to respond regardless.

Most importantly, we have to stop responding with crisis management.

More concretely, this means using tools the municipality has at its disposal to stop the cycle of temporary variances and work toward appropriate, permanent siting and funded supports as a condition of operation. The recent sale and rezoning of land in the industrial park for an addictions treatment facility, and the 3-year lease of 554 Brunswick, both to the John Howard Society, are examples of traditional municipal tools. It also means being a bit fussy about which models we embrace. We should favour evidence-based, well-supported initiatives, and likely smaller, scattered sites rather than concentrating services beyond our ability to manage them. That doesn't mean waiting until every element is perfect before anyone is helped. It means working toward redirecting some of what we’re spending on crisis response toward approaches that address root causes.

Treating this as a perpetual crisis guarantees we'll always have one. When the only question is 'approve this variance or people will freeze,' we've already cut ourselves down to one option. The way to create better options is to start building the system we need before the next crisis forces another band-aid.

The shelter has closed. The people who needed it still need it. The neighbours who lived with its problems still live there. Both deserve better than what we've been doing.