Regina councillor says homeless people need a place to go
While the Avenue K encampment in Saskatoon faces removal, one remains in Regina.
The tent city in Core Community Park in the Heritage neighbourhood is one police said they won’t tear down.
Regina Police Chief Lorilee Davies said police and the city hope to get people into housing or addictions treatment.
Ward 3 Councillor David Froh joined the Greg Morgan Morning Show to discuss homelessness.
“We can’t tear down those encampments unless we have a place for those people to go,” he said. “There’s nowhere for them to go.”
Froh said there isn’t enough supportive housing, which is a provincial responsibility.
“It’s quite maddening that we know what works, and for some reason we’re not willing to do it,” he said.
Froh said he understands businesses’ frustration that traffic through their establishments has decreased since the encampment was set up.
“I feel for those businesses,” he said. “I feel for the people sleeping in the tents. No one wants an encampment.”
Unless there’s more permanent supportive housing and transitional housing, Froh said the situation will only get worse.
Living in tent city
In the midst of the chaos surrounding whether fencing would be put up and the encampment at Avenue K and 20th Street cleared on Thursday, several people in the tent city continued quietly with their day.
Jason is homeless, living in a blue tent along a fence in the encampment area. He said he’s spent the past six winters without a home and finds ways to stay fairly warm, though he’d prefer some “better scenery.”
He wouldn’t call his tent a home, however.
“It’s comfortable. It’s shelter,” he said. “It’s kind of difficult in ways because you can’t properly keep yourself clean and stuff.”
Jason stands beside the blue tent that he said was “messy” on Sept. 24, 2026. He expressed a desire to address his mental health worries, then find stable housing before having to spend a seventh winter outside. (Libby Gray/650 CKOM)
He said the Salvation Army is one of the groups that has come by to offer him help getting into a shelter bed, but said he’d prefer to stay outside.
“I’ve been at them, and there’s a lot of drama,” he said of staying at shelters. “I’d rather be where it’s a little more chill.”
Jason said he’s homeless because he hasn’t been able to find a stable place to live. He said there is a lot of moving around, being kicked out of places and having his stuff taken.
“What are we hurting?” he asked.
He said he wouldn’t have cried, though, if the city had removed and taken his tent and belongings on Thursday.
“It was all free,” he acknowledged with a smile.
He doesn’t understand why the city wants people in the encampment to leave. He said people there try to keep it clean, and he hasn’t known of any fires.
Even though he’s become accustomed to and likes living outdoors, Jason would prefer not to spend another winter living that way. He said he needs to balance his mental state and secure real living accommodations, then get a job.
“Too much time on not doing something, then you think lots,” Jason said. “Sometimes your thoughts wander.”
His résumé includes working on rigs and exterior and interior work on houses.
Amena Stene is homeless from Prince Albert and has been in Saskatoon since July. She said there’s a lot more support for people without places to live in Saskatoon. However, despite living in various apartments in the city, she said outdoor living can be better because of the terrible conditions of many units in the city.
“There’s, like, a lot of dirtiness and, like, cockroaches and, like, it’s not very, it’s not sanitary, and they’re kicking people out of there, also,” she explained.
Amena Stene stands in the encampment on 20th Street at Avenue K on Sept. 24, 2026. She said she hopes everyone can understand that every person has their own struggles, whether or not they live in a tent city. (Libby Gray/650 CKOM)
Amena makes it a priority, she said, to clean wherever she goes, to try to make the places around her a bit better and to encourage others. At the encampment on Thursday, she said she feels comfortable in the tent city.
“These are my people,” she said.
“I thrive in conditions where it’s hard, but like I help people also, and I try and teach that to people just by showing them.”
If she were offered housing today, she said she would take it, but she’s not sure she could maintain it. She would be worried about the cost and has her own struggles with addiction.
“Everybody has a struggle,” she said.
“I think that there shouldn’t be no confrontation whatsoever, and that they should just let the people be, yeah … do what we need to do in order to survive, because that’s what we’re all trying to do, right? We’re trying to survive, or we’re trying to live.”
Saskatoon’s reasoning against encampments
The City of Saskatoon said in a release on Thursday that allowing small tent communities to exist is not a reasonable way to address the lack of adequate housing.
It reinforced that there are risks and dangers posed to those living in them.
The city said that includes an accumulation of human waste, garbage and discarded needles, attraction of pests, reported concerns about human trafficking, and reported gang activity.
These issues, according to the release, are why the city’s approach prioritizes connecting people with housing and food supports and removing encampments.
For the Avenue K and 20th Street encampment, the Salvation Army has been there twice a week since Aug. 5.
On Sept. 22, the organization spent four hours offering support but no one accepted it.
According to the city, people are provided the time to take their things and leave when encampments are removed.
–with files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff, Mia Holowaychuk and Libby Gray and 980 CJME’s Gillian Massie