“...you’re assuming that there’s these desperate homeless people.”

said Donna Harpauer when she was Minister of Social freaking Services.

Do you really pretend you’re surprised when another homeless person freezes to death in Saskatchewan?

Really, the state of housing the vulnerable in Saskatchewan is something for which we should all be deeply ashamed. We’ve sat and watched this government neglect and defund shelters and social and affordable housing for years.

Through at least two election cycles.

So we don’t get to blame Scott Moe and the Sask Party for all of it. Nobody forced this province to watch him and his party do what they do and then vote for them in a landslide anyway, which is exactly what happened.

It’s easy to blame current Social Services Minister Gene Makowsky for the catastrophic failure that is the Sask Housing Corporation (SHC), for the sickening levels of homelessness in the province and well, pretty much every aspect of his current portfolio. I honestly don’t know how he sleeps at night.

IDGAF what he did before politics - Makowsky is responsible for fixing the shitshow he inherited today and if he can not or will not, he does not deserve to be a Minister or re-election as a MLA. He’s been around long enough to know better and if he can’t do his job, it’s time to get traded.

In 2012 the SHC vacancy rate in our province was two percent, or around 360 units.

Almost as soon as Donna Harpauer took over the Ministry of Social Services in 2014 she began running the SHC, which is, or at least once was an important aspect of the Social Services file, like her own investment playground.

By 2014 that number had increased to a whopping 10.1 percent; in 2015 it was 11.5 percent and by 2016, 13.4 percent.

Today it is almost 19 percent.

A couple of weeks ago one of the SHC’s 700 mind-bogglingly empty Regina properties was blown off its foundations. Exploded out of nowhere thanks to a faulty gas line. Because the home was empty no one was killed, blessedly, but only because Scott Moe’s government is apparently now focused on freezing potential tenants to death first.

Despite Regina’s ongoing emergency shelter crisis the four-plex was empty, which the SHC had the audacity to explain away as due to "little demand" for social housing in Regina’s North Central neighbourhood. 

I’m not even addressing the validity of that shockingly stupid statement.

Kim Olsen, the City of Regina’s manager of emergency preparedness and business continuity said recently she is still looking for suitable shelter space in the city.

“I’m sure as you can imagine, it’s not an easy task, that’s for sure,” she told the Leader Post.

No, Kim, I’m sure it’s not.

But it’s late November and last I checked, winter comes to Saskatchewan every year, so how about you move a little faster and earn that publicly-funded salary, k?

People were freezing to death in Saskatchewan in autumn of this year, FFS: you’ve had more than enough time to get your shit together.

Anyway out of the 700 empty SHC units in Regina, the SHC claims 178 are closed due to renos.

The SHC also says over half of Regina’s 700 empty units are in its high rises for seniors.

The SHC has long been trying to convert their high rises “for seniors” into more communal-type living centres for all ages,demographics and income levels. This has failed spectacularly. For years.

The SHC’s inconsistencies in how they’ve managed the definition and allocation of “social” housing versus “affordable” housing versus “seniors” housing has contributed largely to where we are today. All that seems to be consistent is seniors get priority over anyone else.

Don’t forget which of those three cohorts - people living in poverty, low-income families and seniors - predominantly vote Sask Party.

Anyway - of those 700 empty units just in the city of Regina, the SHC lists 300 of those that are empty are designated for seniors and 200 are for families.

Maybe it’s a matter of Saskatchewan people living in poverty not being able to afford to rent our empty social housing.

Under Saskatchewan’s so-called “income support”(SIS) program, a single adult in Saskatoon or Regina receives $575 per month for shelter and utilities, plus $285 each month for food and all other expenses. 

That’s unbelievable.

It’s totally unliveable and no one in their right mind would expect anyone else under any circumstances to be able to use that little bit of money to find their way back to being self-sufficient or have any quality of life, at a time they probably need the help the most.

Except the Sask Party.

Because this is Saskatchewan, it was actually private landlords that sounded the most recent alarm on the provincial government’s latest strategy to create an "alarming trend" of evictions among low-income renters from their properties, leaving people across this province unhoused and freezing in the streets while taxpayer-owned social housing sits empty.

This jives with what Social Services Minister Lori Carr, possibly the most ill-suited woman on the face of this earth to serve anybody in need, nevermind people she can’t relate to, had to say in the spring.

“So just regarding the evictions and the Saskatchewan housing authority… there’s nothing being flagged about excessive evictions or increases on that front.” - Lori Carr, April 5, 2022, Saskatchewan Legislature

Evictions don’t tend to be an issue when you just stop helping people who are hard to house.

I mean honest to god, how frustrating is it that after being told, over and over and over again, by landlords and experts and literally anyone with a human heartbeat that it was a bad idea, the Ministry of Social Services did indeed begin walking back its changes to the way rental supplements were paid to landlords?

Let’s be clear that private landlords in Saskatchewan are not suffering whatsoever. I mean, they presumably appreciate the Sask Party keeping 700 publicly-owned rental units off the market and out of the way of their profits.

Saskatchewan NDP Social Services critic Meara Conway has done an good job of doing everything she possibly can to get the Sask Party to acknowledge this insanity. She has stated repeatedly that the vast majority of Social Services clients are renting from private landlords.

Here’s Conway is in a committee meeting over a year and a half ago:

“I know in my constituency and particularly in North Central, there are dozens of empty Sask Housing units and they appear to be in a lot better shape than a lot of the housing that people are relying on there. I’m wondering if there is any insight as to why those units are sitting empty, as families receiving assistance with children reside in barely habitable, what I would describe as slum dwellings, renting from private landlords...” - NDP Opposition MLA Meara Conway, April 26, 2021 Saskatchewan Legislature

In that same meeting, Carr dreamt up this nonsense in response:

“We really want to be utilizing all of the units that we have. And we do have a plan in place for that, and we have made some changes as we went along. So we’ve actually changed the age limit for seniors from 60 to 55; the asset limit for seniors has increased from 250,000 to 300,000; the seniors’ housing program has expanded to all communities for seniors who are eligible for social housing programs because their income and assets exceed the program limits, provided there are no eligible social housing program applicants.” - Social Services Minister Lori Carr, April 2021

In other words, Carr’s plan was to rent to rich, retired Sask Party-voting farmers ready to move to town. \