Regina’s Executive Committee discusses homeless strategy

City council reviews $1.6M framework to support Regina’s most vulnerable as winter approaches. Mick Favel tells us more.

The City of Regina’s Executive Committee discussed potential changes to its homelessness strategy on Wednesday, looking at enhancing its response in dealing with encampments and assisting the city’s unhoused.

The agenda for the meeting included a number of recommendations from the Executive Committee to City Council. Included in the recommendations are:

• Having the City formalize its relationship with Namerind Housing while also providing $30,000 annually to support coordination and implementation of the City’s plan to end homelessness.
• Providing $1,655,000 from the now defunct Community and Social Impact Regina Inc (CSIR) be reallocated to the City’s Community Safety & Well-being (CSWB) branch.
• Directing $500,000 of CSIR funding be put toward Regina’s community investment grant program.
• Preparing $800,000 in funding for either a third party organization or a team within the City to lead the operations of a street and encampment outreach initiative; and
• Allocating an additional $820,000 through the 2026 budget to advance the Community Safety and Well-being Plan, Plan to End Homelessness, and Encampment Response Plan.

“The issues and priorities in the safety and well being plans are too complex and require multiple sectors to be at the table to address these issues,” David Slater, a manager with CSWB told Executive Committee.

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“With that, our governance model suggests that the city will lead implementation, moving forward with permanent staffing that will focus on coordination, community engagement, data collection, analysis and sharing, including an emphasis on measuring progress and collective community impact.”

Notably, the City’s new approach calls for a permanent encampment response coordinator who will work out of CSWB with any additional CSIR funding going toward street and encampment outreach resources.

Any decisions or recommendations made by Executive Committee will need to be approved by City Council.