This Saskatoon church congregation fought to keep 'junkies' away from the building

(Source: Development Appeals Board)

A routine meeting of Saskatoon's development appeals board this month turned into a snapshot of the city's homelessness and addictions crisis.

Faced with an increasing number of people camping out on its property, discarded needles and human waste, St. Mary’s Parish at 211 Avenue O South opted to put up a chain link fence around its office, nearly two metres high — contravening the city's one-metre limit for the front of the property.

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Father Kevin McGee told the appeals board his parishioners no longer felt safe coming to church. Wanting to move quickly, and not knowing what else to do, they raised the fence.

In July, the city ordered the church to remove or rebuild it shorter.

The letters for and against the appeal reflect the anguish and divisions as the city confronts record levels of homelessness and open drug use.

Many parishioners describe feeling unsafe. One said this concern for safety was diminishing their attendance numbers.

“The community and the neighbourhood around the church is a dangerous zone,” said another letter.

“I saw a lot of junkies doing drugs just in the main entrance stairs. It is pretty common to see people smoking drugs and under [the] influence in the stairs of the church. So yes, the fence will keep these people out of the grass and they will not fall asleep there or they will not dirty the lawn.”

McGee enlisted the Saskatoon Police Service to conduct a security assessment in support of his appeal.

Police consultant Karen Farmer lauded their efforts to “address problems related to recent changes in the area, specifically the crisis of homelessness, acute poverty, and intravenous drug addiction.”

Staff assessed the area around the church property over two days in August and determined the fence “succeeded to significantly reduce the vandalism, graffiti and discarded needles immediately beside the church,” Farmer’s report says.

To deter people from camping along the open west side of the building — “currently a spot where people recline after being intoxicated” — Farmer recommends planting a row of prickly raspberry bushes.

Saskatoon’s bylaw enforcement manager Leanne DeLong opposed the appeal, saying it would grant special privileges not available to other properties on the street.

Delong says the fence got on their radar because of a public complaint.

Deacon Paul Labelle of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Saskatoon’s First Nations and Métis Roman Catholic parish spoke to the board in opposition to the fence.

Labelle holds mass at St. Mary’s on Sunday afternoons and he told the hearing he wasn’t consulted about the building of the fence.

“He feels it provides strange optics as it does look like a prison,” the decision report from the hearing said.

“I also have been told by many of our Indigenous parishioners and even some of St. Mary’s parishioners, that the fence has set the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous back a hundred years,” Labelle wrote in his letter to the appeals board.

Labelle argues the fence has no effect on the problems it was intended to solve. He said there was a hole cut in the side of it, trash was thrown inside, and he’s seen evidence of people sleeping within the fence.

“So unless some razor wire is going to be added to the top of the fence, it will probably continue.”

In spite of the obvious signs of homelessness around the church, Labelle questions whether that means parishioners are less safe. He said he spends quite a bit of time in the neighbourhood and never feels threatened.

Based on a three-part test set out for the appeal of zoning bylaws, the board sided with McGee in its Oct. 19 decision.

They deemed allowing the fence would not be inconsistent with the restrictions on neighbouring properties, defeat the intent of the bylaw or be injurious to neighbouring properties.

The fence stays up.