North Battleford Mayor Ian Hamilton says now is the time to work on creating a permanent homeless shelter.
For the past three years, Battlefords Indian and Métis Friendship Centre has operated a temporary shelter but does not want to continue doing so.
The friendship centre says operating the shelter is too dangerous for its employees because they are not equipped to deal with the mental health issues of some clients and it also believes homelessness is a problem that should be dealt with by the city as a whole.
Mayor Hamilton says now is the time to work on a permanent solution.
“I don’t dispute that at all and the fact that Jackie Kennedy has already stated they don’t have any interest in pursuing this for another year, it does put some urgency into the planning stages on a more proactive basis,” he says.
Recently, the Battlefords Agency Tribal Chiefs Development Corporation gave the homeless shelter $13,000 so its doors could remain open until the end of March.
Hamilton says the development corporation could be part of a solution to keep the shelter open on a permanent basis.