The Safe Harbour Day Shelter and a sobering centre at the Salvation Army have made a significant impact in addressing issues of homelessness and addictions in the city's downtown streets.
There has been a noticeable reduction of unlawful behaviour due to the introduction of those valuable services and the mobile Yellowknife Street Outreach, which diverted people in distress due to intoxication from ambulances or police.
The John Howard Society previously ran the day shelter in a building on 51 Street but the NWT Disabilities Council took over when it moved to its current space.
On Monday, Nathalie Nadeau, director of Child, Family and Community Wellness for the Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority (NTHSSA), made a progress update on the construction of the combined 60-person day shelter/sobering centre to the Municipal Services Committee that was full of operational details not previously known.
Full disclosure: The 4,750-square-foot $736,000-plus sobering centre will be housed in the former Canarctic Graphics building adjacent to the Northern Lites Motel downtown. Northern News Services is leasing the building to the GNWT.
However, that communications initiative was too little and too late for some neighbours of the new sobering centre.
While NTHSSA representatives said they had contacted neighbours, two of them spoke up at the meeting – including April Desjarlais – stating they were never contacted by either representative.
Desjarlais is a longtime Yellowknifer and has owned the Finn Hansen Building since 2013. Safety of her tenants is the key concern, said Desjarlais, acknowledging that shelter services are important.
"The fact that I'm a Yellowknifer, a Northerner, an Aboriginal person, I recognize we have a need in this community and there's a lot of people who need help," she said.
"The communication has not been the best. A lot of people have questioned why you would put a sobering centre 50 feet from the liquor store. This isn't to say that people using the facility are going to be aggressive, but that's why it was important to understand the health authority's plan for safety and security.
"If it's modelled after the day shelter, that is a complete fail, if that's what's going to be coming next to us."
That lack of direct communication for residents and businesses about the project – whose neighbour on the other side from the Finn Hansen Building is the Northern Lites Motel – was also brought to Yellowknifer's attention when the new location was first announced. Many said they hadn't heard anything from the government about the move.
The GNWT has a duty to ease fears over major projects – from the start and throughout construction – that will have a real affect on people's lives. Concerns the new sobering centre will be a hotbed of loitering, littering and public intoxication are real.
These concerns certainly aren’t unreasonable and the NTHSSA on Monday laid out what looks like some effective security plans. We hope they work and will be monitored and upgraded, as needed.
A combined centre is needed to help address the ongoing issue of homelessness and addiction in the city's core. We need to both help people find paths to a better life, and also make sure the city is presented in a positive light both for downtown re-development and for the growing tourism industry.
But the GNWT really has to reassess how thoroughly it's communicating with people about what is the largest social engineering project in the city's centre.