New Glasgow community members want homeless shelter relocated from downtown core

A homeless shelter in New Glasgow, N.S., has become a safety concern.

The Viola’s Place Society is an adult homeless shelter in New Glasgow, N.S. It’s been around since 2018 but was forced to expand in 2022 due to increased demand. Now they face full capacity every night, with a waitlist.

“It initially started with eight beds and when COVID hit and the homeless crisis hit, we had to increase our capacity to 20 beds,” says Lisa Deyoung, the shelter’s executive director.

The shelter provides a variety of services, including daytime hours. The team helps with housing, medical, mental health and addiction support and introduced an outreach team in September that checks in on those living in encampments.

“Our team is probably supporting about 10 people that we are aware of that are in encampments. But, of course, people are transient, for example, if we were expecting a cold night they may come and use the shelter just for a night and then go back out to the encampments,” adds Deyoung.

“A lot of it is a capacity issue where we just don’t have enough beds and the other piece is they are just uncomfortable in these communal environments.”

The mayor of the town feels the work the team does is important and needed in their community.

“I have heard that 90 per cent of the clients require addiction and mental health services, so obviously that’s really important,” says Nancy Dicks.

Community members recognize the work being done by the shelter but feel unsafe downtown. They are attributing it to a growing problem but also Viola’s Place’s location.

“The main concern from the neighbours and the businesses is the safety issue and it has a very serious impact on the neighbours surrounding the shelter,” adds Dicks.

“They are exposed to things that you would not expect to be exposed to living in a home.”

Deyoung says she understands where residents’ fear is coming from but feels it’s due to misinformation.

“There is a lot of conversation about dry, wet shelters and that we are letting people use on the property without consequences. I do not know how people would know that without talking to us or the individuals, but we definitely do not allow people to use on the property,” she says.

“If we catch people, there is a discharge policy where they are banned for the night or the day and it progresses from there. If we are forced to ban someone for the night, they are looking for other shelter, so we need people to remember that if the harder we are on people the more desperate they are going to be in the community.”

Deyoung adds, without homes, safety is always going to be an issue. She asks people to put themselves in the shoes of those without a place to call home.

“I always hope people can imagine what life would be like if you were stripped of their home, their loved ones, their clothes, and you’re left with nothing but the clothes on your back, you would do anything you could to survive,” she says.

She adds these problems can be resolved, but only when a housing-first model is followed and more supportive housing becomes available. Until then, they have nowhere else to go.

The mayor agrees the problem is beyond just the team.

“It’s all of us. There are many things that we have gaps in, we have gaps in mental health and addiction. There are services available, but I am not sure if at this point those services are able to affect those in the greatest of need,” adds Dicks.

“I do believe Viola’s Place is very much in support of the housing-first initiative, which I believe is the proper way to look at this, but I also think we have to understand that housing can take many different forms.”

In the past 24 months, New Glasgow Regional Police has seen an approximate 15 per cent increase in calls to the region.

“In particular, we go back to the month of August, which was an 18 per cent increase in call volume, which was the single largest jump in call volume in the history of our organization,” says Chief Ryan Leil.

Leil says police have been paying close attention to data to figure out what the drivers are.

“We see that the drivers are a variety of calls, but calls that we have categorized as quality of life. We look at the complex social challenges that we are seeing a lot more visible in small towns,” he says.

Leil explains that quality of life calls are tied back to poverty, housing insecurity, mental illness, and addictions. He says it’s usually layers of issues.

“It’s gotten to the point now where addiction has gotten so high, and the drug use in the community. Fentanyl hit our community in 2023, and it had a significant impact on our community,” says Deyoung.

“And then, in 2024, the buildings across the street were condemned, so there were over 30 people that were displaced. And we had said when those buildings go, be prepared to see more homelessness in the streets, more open drugs, an increase in crime, and that’s what we have seen.”

New Glasgow police are not drawing a direct line from the number of calls they get to vulnerable people in the downtown core. However, community members are, saying the location is posing a safety problem.

“I think the fear, pretty realistically, is if I go downtown am I going to get attacked? Is there concern for my safety? This is not my opinion, it’s what I am hearing,” says local entrepreneur Ryan Parker.

“Numerous residents have come to me with heart pounding stories about what they have seen and what they have experienced. I want to bring their stories to the public.”

The police chief says, on average, the number of calls they get in relation to the shelter varies each month.

“On average we are seeing 20 to 25 calls for service involving that shelter. When we look at that specific vulnerable population and when we talk about mental health and substance use disorders, that number grows astronomically in the downtown core,” adds Leil.

Mayor Dicks has been hearing concerns about the shelter for the past two years, but she says in the last six months they have become quite frequent, which led the town to hold a meeting on Oct. 1.

“It was a respectful, honest conversation. From that we recapped what that conversation looked like, and we provided a ‘what we heard report’. It was a factual information report on what we heard at that meeting. That was the extent of that report, it wasn’t our opinion and what we thought, it was just recapping the facts of that meeting,” says Dicks.

It was a full house meeting, with capacity for 250 and people had to be turned away.

“We had our police chief give an overview of the impact it was having on town services, police, fire, and public works. Then we had a panel who also spoke – myself, the executive director of Viola’s Place, the police chief again, and somebody from mental health and addictions," adds Dicks.

The mayor says they learned the town’s residents are experiencing significant fear.

“And that basically the status quo was not acceptable. If you don’t feel safe in your community then nothing else matters,” says Dicks.

Not long after, a petition was started by Parker who owns three businesses in New Glasgow, one being the Riverside Inn. So far, it has received over 600 signatures.

“Relocate the shelter. I know that is not going to solve all the problems, but it is a digestible action that the community can get behind. Relocate the shelter and we will work on the more complex issues as they come, but our purpose of the petition is simple, relocate the shelter to a less residential area where it can get the function and services it needs to be successful,” Parker says.

The shelter says a relocation will not ease concerns, nor solve the problem.

“Whether we are here or in another neighbourhood, no one’s probably going to want a homeless shelter in their community, but the effort and the passion that the community is putting behind those things, if it could be redirected to the root cause that would be key,” says Deyoung.

Parker does not put the blame on Viola’s Place for the crisis, he recognizes it’s beyond them, but thinks moving from the downtown could help with community safety.

He explains, having lived in Pictou County his whole life and owned businesses there for many years, in the last four to five years he’s seen a deterioration of the sense of safety in the community.

“New Glasgow has a lot to offer, and they have an enormous amount of potential, but it’s being hindered substantially by a crisis that is impacting this town… I have seen people who are terrified to walk downtown when it gets dark., I have seen parents crying because they believe their children are at risk of danger,” says Parker.

He says he admires what Viola’s Place is trying to do, but says they haven’t been successful in doing all of what needs to be done.

“The numbers show that they’re trying, and I am not remotely interested in speaking negatively about that organization because I think they mean well. But I don’t think they have the tools, the infrastructure and frankly the oversight to run that organization the way it needs to be addressed… the problem is so massive, it goes beyond the town of New Glasgow," adds Parker.

Since the October meeting, the town has met again with the society to discuss next steps. They have put forward three requests of the shelter they would like to see in the next 30 days, which dates into January.

“One being a privacy fence which has been requested by the citizens, security throughout the evening and into the night. We have also asked them, because this has been asked by Viola’s Desmond’s family, is that they do look at a name change,” adds Dicks.

Deyoung says the name change is a very complex issue to consider and it’s costly, so they are still having discussions.

“The other thing that we discussed was the fence, they wanted a gate here and security, which we are in the process of moving forward with,” she says.

“The only thing I want the public to know is that once that gate goes up, it’s segregating another piece of the population. So, we will have our clients here that are accessing a bed and the ones that can’t are out in the community and in your backyards looking for places to stay. We can block us off and put security and whatever, but the ones that aren’t on this side of the gate, more are going to be on the other side.”

Members of the public feel the first step is moving the space to a less residential area.

“We are pushing for a different location that will reduce harm on the local community and improve outcomes for the vulnerable individuals in need of that service,” says Parker.

Like many communities across Nova Scotia, homelessness, as well as mental health and addiction, is a new problem for New Glasgow. It’s something those in the town say they are taking seriously and admit it’s something that takes time, but they are advocating for change.

“Over the past number of months, along with the public being very vocal, it has generated some very good conversions across all three levels of government. I have been involved in a lot of those conversations, and I will say that the role that the municipality can play in this is a lot of advocate groups turning to the provincial government, turning to the federal government, not only for funding support, but also looking at this from a systems level approach,” adds Leil.

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