City committee supports Saskatoon Tribal Council's Indigenous street teams project

Councillors on a city committee are recommending more money be spent on groups looking at battling homelessness and addressing safety issues in downtown Saskatoon.

On Monday, councillors on the planning, development and community services standing policy committeerecommended council give the Saskatoon Tribal Council an additional $100,000 for its Sawyihotn pilot project.

The pilot program was started last year and sent Indigenous street teams to work with homeless people in the downtown. According to a report, between November 2020 and early February 2021, the program worked with 477 people and 69 of them were housed.

"We need to look at some more proactive ways of going and working with people who are homeless and helping them navigate through the system," said Mayor Charlie Clark.

"It's really, really important that we have that engagement and the ownership over trying to build solutions among a number of parties. Because as we've talked about earlier, the city can't do it on our own."

Homelessness has become an issue in downtown Saskatoon. The city's Community Support Program said its officers are finding more and more people sleeping outside in the downtown, often in unsafe conditions.

In a letter from the tribal council, Chief Mark Arcand noted the province has agreed to extend the project and is giving an extra $350,000.

Councillors also recommended increasing money going towardanother group that works on homelessness in the city.

The Community Safety and Well-Being Partnership is asking for a total of $80,000 to fund administration, including $50,000 over two years to implementbroad-based actions to make the city feel safer.

The partnership is made up of manygroups, including Saskatoon'spolice and fire departments, the Central Urban Mtis Federation and the Saskatchewan Health Authority.

The recommendations still need to be approved by city council. After that, they would need to be approved in the 2022-23 budget deliberations to be held next year.