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Saskatoon’s Point-in-Time (PiT) homeless count will look different this year because of protesters’ actions, the city said.
On Oct. 2, the City of Saskatoon issued a news release saying the count, scheduled for Tuesday and which provides a snapshot of the number of homeless people, would not include unsheltered people.
The reasoning goes back to Sept. 24, when protestors gathered at the encampment on Avenue K and 20th Street to prevent fire inspectors, police officers and contractors from tearing down the space.
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That situation raised concerns about the upcoming PiT Count, according to the city’s director of planning and development, Lesley Anderson.
“The situation that we’ve seen is not around our volunteers engaging with people that are unhoused out in our community. It has been the concern around the aggressive protests and advocates that we’ve seen out there, and the situation caused by that,” she said during a press conference on Monday.
Anderson explained that in the past, volunteers had good experiences conducting the count, with unsheltered people being generous with their time and experiences.
The plan this year was for volunteers to go out for 12 hours on Oct. 6 and conduct the survey, but after recent aggression, the city didn’t want to send community volunteers into that environment.
“We really couldn’t put our volunteers into a situation where there’s some volatility when they’re really volunteering just to help the community understand a situation,” Anderson said.
Although Anderson didn’t express explicit fears about what protesters might do to volunteers, she said the city cannot ensure the count would go smoothly.
Any consideration of delaying the count for a few weeks was quashed because 250 volunteers had already committed to Oct. 6. According to Anderson, asking all these people to rearrange their schedules for a new day felt unreasonable.
Additionally, warming centres will likely reopen by Nov. 1, so Anderson said the people inside would be counted as sheltered rather than unsheltered, which could skew the data.
Mitigating the loss
The city is working to mitigate the impact of the data loss from its decision.
For one, Anderson said, it will try to provide the best estimate of how many people are experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
Those living in encampments will still be included in the survey, she said, because the Saskatoon Fire Department has a good sense of how many people reside in those conditions.
Additionally, the city will still collect data on occupancy levels at transitional housing providers and shelters, as well as from jails, prisons, and hospitals on the number of people who would be discharged into homelessness.
Melissa Zimmer, president and founder of Bridge City Warmth, said she understands why the city isn’t comfortable doing this part of the PiT Count right now, but the change raises concerns.
Bridge City Warmth, a non-profit that finds housing for unsheltered people, uses the count to plan because it shows how many people need help.
She added that the organization recently shared last year’s PiT Count on its Facebook page along with additional information.
“Once we put that post out, we had a complete influx of donations that came in because sometimes people don’t realize how many people are actually unhoused,” she said.
So, the count directly affects the resources her non-profit organization gets.
— with files from 650 CKOM’s Mia Holowaychuk
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