Shelter. Connection. Proximity. Community.

Last week, Prince Edward Island’s provincial government flexed its legislative muscles to protect vulnerable people in its capital city. 

The province’s housing minister stepped in to ensure the city’s homeless shelter and outreach centre would remain in the downtown when the city council took action to have it relocated after some neighbours and councillors raised concerns about loitering, drug use and property damage outside the shelter’s gates.    

“It’s unfortunate because we’re not trying to impact people negatively, but we’re also trying to take care of a vulnerable population,” said housing minister Steven Myers, referring to the people who use the shelter and outreach centre, many of them struggling with mental health issues and addictions. 

This week, Scott Armstrong, Nova Scotia’s Minister of Opportunities and Social Development – the provincial department responsible for community services and housing – visited Eleanor’s Court, the 25-unit, deeply affordable harm reduction housing development set to open later this month. 

His department will help to cover the operating costs at Eleanor’s Court. Funding for the construction of the building, which is owned and stewarded by New Dawn and will be operated by the Ally Centre of Cape Breton, came from the Rapid Housing Initiative, a federal CMHC program that supports the rapid development of residential housing units for those in need of deeply affordable housing, and Reaching Home, the federal homelessness strategy. 

The building, nestled in Sydney’s North End on the former Holy Angels High School site, is beautiful and bright with natural light coming in from its many windows. It has a common kitchen and living area, 25 single-unit apartments, and space for programming and services.  

Immense care and thought went into the design of the interior and exterior of the building to ensure it best serves its residents and is a positive contribution to the neighbourhood and community – a community that continues to see rising homelessness and is, through the work of service providers and non-profit organizations, creating supportive housing solutions to give people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness a safe place to call home. 

Eleanor’s Court is one piece of that puzzle. The Jane Paul Centre is in the process of constructing accommodations for their clients near the downtown, and The Elizabeth Fry Society, which provides supports and transitional supportive housing for women exiting correctional facilities, has relocated to the downtown with plans for downtown supportive housing. In her 2022 presentation to Council, when seeking a change to bylaws to allow the housing to proceed, Darlene MacEachern, Executive Director of the Society said, “We’re not doing our folks any favours by … keeping them sequestered outside of the city when all the services are located in the downtown core.” 

A few blocks from where that housing is being constructed is Sydney’s homeless shelter, operated by the Cape Breton Community Housing Association, which moved to its downtown location five years ago to meet the growing demand. The association also operates three supportive housing locations for men in and around the downtown core. 

It’s no coincidence these facilities are centralized in the downtown – their clients benefit from access to the amenities and services located there. In many cases, their lives depend on it. These services include the regional library, Loaves and Fishes foodbank, the YMCA and its employment programs, Every Women’s Centre, Transition House, and the Ally Centre, which provides healthcare, a safe needle exchange, and a federally regulated and provincially funded overdose prevention site. A new Integrated Youth Services site will open in the spring at the New Dawn Centre. 

Based on the actions taken by PEI’s provincial government last week, this is something Minister Myers understands and values.  

“We have to do what we can to protect vulnerable people, and the job falls to me because the city won’t pick up its part of the bargain,” he said. 

When Charlottetown council rejected the province’s request for an extension of a zoning change that allowed the operation of the homeless shelter and outreach centre in its current downtown location, the province enacted regulatory amendments to create a special planning area, giving the provincial government final say on what happens inside that zone, not the municipality of Charlottetown.  

 ”They had a chance to do the right thing, and they chose not to take it. They took the coward’s way out. And I fixed it for them.” 

In Sydney, significant investment and work has gone into the revitalization of the downtown over the past five years. During the same period, cities across the country – including Sydney – have grappled with a national housing crisis, the rising cost of living, and the lack of access to mental health and addictions services. The CBRM has a long history of poverty and addictions but now has visible homelessness for the first time and we are seeing that – along with the poverty, addictions, and trauma that have always been here – in the downtown. 

According to the latest Service-based Homelessness Count, CBRM has seen a 71 percent increase in people experiencing homelessness since 2021, from 325 to 557. During CBU housing researcher Catherine Leviten-Reid’s presentation of this data to CBRM council in March, Mayor Cecil Clarke, who pledged to remove the homeless shelter and the Ally Centre from downtown Sydney as part of his election campaign, said the municipality is working with Cape Breton Community Housing Association and the province to relocate the homeless shelter. 

“Our downtown communities are for everyone and that’s using a rights-based approach to housing,” Leviten-Reid said, pointing out the importance of emergency and supportive housing being in walking distance of amenities and support services, “instead of being pushed to the outskirts of our communities, thereby losing access to important support organizations.” 

Canada’s Federal Housing Advocate, Marie-Josée Houle, urges all levels of government to take a human rights approach to housing and homelessness. In her recommendations to municipalities, she calls on municipalities to repeal all by-laws and other regulations that restrict people experiencing homelessness from accessing public space, to ban “hostile architecture” (e.g. spikes on sidewalks, armrests on benches) that is designed to stop homeless people from sitting, sleeping and sheltering in public places, and to provide financial and other support to organizations serving people experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.  

Eleanor’s Court will provide long-term supportive housing for vulnerable populations – where they can live safely with staff, supports, and counselling on site and have access to the cluster of supports and services in the downtown to aid in their rebuilding of healthy, safe, whole lives and relationships. It is our hope that others depending on that access, including the clients of the homeless shelter, continue to have it. 

The leadership of PEI’s Progressive Conservative provincial government confirms that downtowns are for everyone. Minister Myers and his colleagues provide a contemporary example of elected officials putting vulnerable people at the heart of their decisions and working with – rather than against – where people naturally want to be. They show us what it means to build inclusive communities, make policy that serves inclusion rather than exclusion, and uphold human rights in discussions of downtown planning.