Yukon premier stands behind low-barrier shelter model despite complaints

Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai is standing behind the low-barrier model for the Whitehorse Emergency Shelter even as it continues to draw complaints from the Opposition and local businesses. 

The latest round of debate about the shelter touched off in the Legislative Assembly last week, when the Yukon Party released documents showing the government purchased a neighbouring pet store that's borne the brunt of bad behaviour around the shelter.

Complaints about drug use, public urination, noise and other problems have circulated almost nonstop since the non-profit Connective took over operation of the shelter in 2022. The Yukon Party is ramping up calls to do away with the shelter's low-barrier model, which allows intoxicated people to access services.

The owners of the nearby Alpine Bakery, which has been closed for more than a year and a half because of problems at the shelter, wrote that the government has done little to actually fix the issues.

"Everyday we are now collecting needles, picking up human feces on our property, dealing with individuals blocking our doorways, feeling intimidation, threats and even having to use side doors to access our building," wrote Walter and Sylvia Streit on their website.

The Streits said when the Salvation Army ran the shelter it had a "low to moderate" effect on the neighbourhood and that when the Yukon government turned it into a low-barrier facility "issues started to arise."

"It's not possible for anyone to reasonably operate a business like a bakery in a situation where there's active drug use happening literally on their front doorstep," said Yukon Party MLA Brad Cathers during debate this week.

Pillai, who took over the shelter file from Health and Social Services Minister Tracy-Anne McPhee last year, has said he'd like to see the long-term housing units on the shelter's upper floors move to a "high-barrier" approach. But he said the shelter on the ground floor must remain low-barrier.

And he rejected the idea that there weren't problems downtown before the shelter adopted its current low-barrier approach. "Things certainly were not all roses," he said.

"You're still going to need some area where people that are under the influence can still go and seek services."

'It doesn't work'

NDP Leader Kate White agreed the previous high-barrier format had its flaws, but she said the current shelter model isn't working either.

"The reality is the current model does not work for anyone," she said. "Because you have people who want sober support and ... people who need to access support where they're under the influence. And right now, we're funnelling everyone into the same one. So it doesn't work."

Zoë Dodd, who lived in Whitehorse as a teenager and who is now a scholar at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions in Toronto, said the solution for the shelter requires better policies, more programs, more affordable housing and not cutting off access.

"If you have services that say you have to be abstinent [from drugs and alcohol] to enter these services, then you are going to be refusing a great number of people who need to access those emergency services, which was the problem with the shelter system prior to all of this, these absence based policies that just aren't attainable," she said.