REGINA - As city council passed a motion to declare a houselessness crisis, a local organization believes this should of come sooner.
The Regina Street Team (RST) said the city should have been more proactive to the rising number of people on the streets.
"If we had done something a couple of years ago, we might not be in the same situation today," said Jason Knudsen, RST outreach program manager.
In the 2024 point-in-time (PIT) count, there was a 255 per cent uptick of homeless people in the city from 2015. However, as RST clinical program manager Rob Kraushaar pointed out, many unhoused people aren’t being seen.
"There are houses that I go to myself, where there are 20 people," said Kraushaar.
He believes the city called the houselessness crisis to respond to the weather starting to get warmer, which will see an increase in unhoused people in visible areas, like under bridges.
Part of the motion passed by city council called on the provincial government to raise the provinces' income assistance rates so that clients do not fall below the poverty line.
"I think that's a basic starting point. It's unreasonable to expect anyone, let alone someone who's dealing with [a] disability, to be able to exist in this world," said Knudsen.
In their 2025 budget, the province increased both the Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) and Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID) by two per cent.
However, households under SIS could only receive $60 per month more, while houses under SAID may receive up to an additional $684 per year.
These numbers aren't on par with the increases in costs because of inflation, uncertainty of tariffs for the economy and other factors.
One point Kraushaar mentioned is that people on SIS are typically forced to live with others they don’t know because of the lack of income they receive.
"People could get a roommate that sells drugs and does whatever they want," he said.
These situations could lead to people ending up on the streets and getting blacklisted because the property has been damaged.
Unlike in the past, people under SIS are also now required to pay rent and utilities for their spaces.
While allocating more money to the program is a start, Kraushaar believes there needs to be fair wages for people who do social housing work because some people can’t even afford a place themselves.
Another part of the motion called "on the Government of Saskatchewan and Canada to contribute emergency funding to address the urgent houselessness crisis immediately."
With a current federal election ongoing, Kraushaar said it’s unclear which local politicians will seek to address homelessness as that’s not usually a major campaign promise for candidates.
If the government did give the city money, Knudsen said it should go towards 24/7 service.
"We need housing, supportive housing and [we] need wrap-around supports," he said.
Knudsen mentioned it wouldn’t make sense for, say the RST to expand to 24-hour operations if there weren’t shelters or beds open to take people.
"We have to do everything at once, we can't just pick and choose what we think are the parts we would like to execute."
Kraushaar also mentioned that more money should be invested in community organizations.
"They know the areas, the people, and what is needed," he said.
As it stands, city administration will report back to council in Q3 on the financial resources required to execute the city’s obligations, tactics and strategies.
While it’s unclear whether the province and feds will step in, Kraushaar feels Regina is taking the steps necessary to combat the issue.
