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Murray Wood is celebrating October, as we enjoy the last days of warm weather before the winter hits. In Saskatchewan, W...
As the need for shelter spaces has risen in the province, one of the major slowdowns in building emergency shelters in Saskatchewan’s cities has seemed to be location – the city, the province, businesses and locals have a hard time agreeing on where they should go.
In Moose Jaw, the Willow Lodge emergency shelter has been operating on Ominica Street West since early 2024. But, Wednesday morning, the city’s mayor announced the Ministry of Social Services was directing it to find a new location.
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About 22 minutes into a Sask. Party news conference about meetings with local leaders on Wednesday, Mayor James Murdock stepped up to the microphone and said the ministry had told him in those meetings that the shelter needed to be moved.
“We will continue to have open dialogue with the Ministry of Social Services — they have asked that the city provide locations that we may feel may be appropriate,” explained Murdock.
He said the discussions just started, so he couldn’t give an idea of which new locations might be on the table.
However, late in the afternoon, the provincial government sent out a statement, saying the Ministry of Social Services did not provide a directive to relocate the shelter and that it’s continuing to engage with city and community partners.
“Meetings have taken place with the mayor and local community members to discuss concerns, and those discussions will continue to support a coordinated approach that meets community needs,” read the statement.
It said municipalities are responsible for finding a suitable location for a shelter, and the ministry is responsible for reviewing the locations.
However, during the news conference earlier in the day, the Premier and Justice Minister spoke about the shelter and did not dispute the mayor’s assertion.
Why relocate?
Justice Minister Tim McLeod said he and his MLA colleagues in the Moose Jaw area had heard direct requests from businesses and people living in the downtown for the shelter to be moved. He said the government is asking the city to find a location that isn’t “negatively impacting” businesses and people downtown.
Murdock said the city didn’t ask the provincial government to make the move, that it was a directive from the ministry.
“We need to remember that the downtown core and district is vital to the operation of the city and for enhancing what we offer for services, so the ministry feels that the best way for that to be achieved is to see that a permanent temporary shelter be relocated in an appropriate area in the City of Moose Jaw,” said the mayor.
Moose Jaw Mayor James Murdock. Oct. 8, 2025 (Lisa Schick/980 CJME)
Chair of the Downtown Moose Jaw Association, Alex Carleton, said his organization also hadn’t asked for the move, and he had just found out about it on Wednesday morning. However, he also said he had no doubt there’d been an outcry about crime and violence in the area.
“There’s a lot of passionate business owners that are worried about their livelihood,” he explained.
Carleton said they’re trying to find ways to be compassionate and work with people in the community.
“But on the same hand, our tourism is very important, and our businesses, we have to be mindful of them and we want to make sure that we’re protecting our downtown,” he said.
He said he thinks they can help people while also protecting businesses.
Both McLeod and Premier Scott Moe said moving the 15-bed shelter isn’t aimed to, and won’t reduce what’s available to people in need.
“It’s not about reducing those services, but it’s maybe about reducing some of the peripheral impact that providing those services might have on the safety of our communities,” said Moe.
No timeline was given for when the new location would be expected to open.
The Willow Lodge emergency shelter opened in January 2024 with $124,400 from the provincial government at the time, to operate for about three months. The funding was part of the government’s Provincial Approach to Homelessness, launched in October 2023.
980 CJME reached out to Mayor Murdock and the provincial government to get clarity on what happened in the meetings and whether the shelter will be moving. A response was not received by publication time.
