P.E.I. government setting up special zone to keep shelter and outreach centre on Park Street

The province's emergency overnight shelter and Community Outreach Centre will continue operating in its current location within Charlottetown despite a city council vote earlier this week, P.E.I.'s housing minister says.

In an interview Thursday, Steven Myers said regulatory amendments have been enacted to create a special planning area taking in a large plot of land that includes the Park Street property on which the shelter and outreach centre are located.

That gives the provincial government final say on what happens inside that zone, not the municipality of Charlottetown. 

"Effectively we're taking Charlottetown's development rights away from the area and giving them to the government by creating a special planning area," Minister Steven Myers told CBC News: Compass host Louise Martin. 

"From here forward, the Government of Prince Edward Island makes all the decisions on that land. And it will be a shelter, like I said from the start." 

A statement from the province later spelled out: "These powers are prescribed to the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council under Section 8.1 of the Planning Act and designate the minister as the authority having jurisdiction over planning within the special planning area."

On Tuesday night, Charlottetown city council voted to reject the province's request for an extension of a zoning change to cover the operations on Park Street.

Approving it would have allowed both services to remain in the area indefinitely, although the province had previously insisted the location would be temporary. 

"We have to do what we can to protect vulnerable people and the job falls to me because the city won't pick up its part of the bargain," Myers said.  

"They had a chance to do the right thing and they chose not to take it. They took the coward's way out. And I fixed it for them." 

'We tried to work with the city'

When asked why the province didn't step in sooner, Myers said: "There was never a time where we didn't have full control over this file."

He added: "We tried to tell the city, we tried to work with the city, we put staff on this for days and days on end. 

"We've given a lot of money to the City of Charlottetown to hire police to police just that area. We've made offers to buy houses in the area if people felt like they couldn't live there anymore."

Myers said the province has bought some houses in the Park Street area, and will continue to buy them if homeowners want to sell. Some neighbours and councillors have raised concerns about loitering, drug use and property damage outside the shelter's gates.   

"It's unfortunate because we're not trying to impact people negatively, but we're also trying to take care of a vulnerable population," he said, referring to the people who use the shelter and outreach centre, many of them struggling with mental health issues and addictions.

"The thing for us is we were told that the city was going to deal with this. We were told that that was the best piece of land by the city. We were told then that they were going to work with us and they agreed with everything we were doing there. And then they pulled the rug out from underneath us."

Why it matters

A recent Point in Time count conducted by the John Howard Society showed that the number of unhoused people across the Island has more than doubled since the last count three years earlier. 

Myers said that if the services provided through the shelter and outreach centre on Park Street were no longer available, there would be more homeless encampments in Charlottetown. 

"Courts across Canada have already ruled that you can't take [camps] down if you don't have a reasonable sheltering to provide people, which we wouldn't," he said. 

"Without those services, the people are still going to be there, and we're not going to have as much knowledge about the situations or the services that people need, and we're not going to be able to help people."