Saint John greenlights two areas for transitional housing for 54 people

CBC

22-05-2025

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Saint John council has approved a plan for "green zones" to tackle the city's growing homeless population and reduce the number of encampments around the city.
The pilot project aims to bring 54 individual transitional housing units to two sites — one off Thorne Avenue and the other nearby on Egbert Street, a small side street off Thorne Avenue. Both are near the Atlantic Superstore and the Church of England Cemetery.
On Tuesday night, council voted in favour of the city recommendation to designate the two areas "pilot sites." City staff, Mayor Donna Reardon and various organizations also presented the plan at a media event Wednesday morning.
Reardon said it's a significant step.
"This strategy reflects our commitment to a people-centred, human-rights-based approach, ensuring that every resident has access to safe, supported and sustainable housing," she said.
"The sites are city-owned properties providing legally sanctioned, safe transitional housing for individuals experiencing homelessness."
Saint John first announced green, yellow and red zones as a part of its Housing for All strategy in July 2024, in a city-led response to the growing homeless population.
Cara Coes, the city's senior manager of community support services, said at Tuesday's council meeting that the 12 Neighbours charity group will be operating the green zones and running their "Neighbourly" project on the sites in order to "rapidly deploy" transitional housing.
The two green zones will each have two courtyards, Coes said, that will have individual units for at least 13 people each. Every unit will have a bed, locking doors, heat, lights and internet. Both green zones will be staffed 24/7 and will have shared washroom, laundry, kitchen and multi-purpose facilities.
12 Neighbours also runs a tiny home community in Fredericton.
"Each of the units are also equipped with an Android tablet," said Marcel LeBrun, the organization's founder.
"That gives people access to services, but also entertainment and things like that ... having communications and those things is very important."
LeBrun said people living in the units will be able to live there for free to start.
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"There's no charge to begin with," he said.
"We are in discussions between the province and the city about transitioning to moving to paying something because that's part of housing stability. So part of housing stability is you have to learn to pay rent."
Future residents will be chosen from the city's co-ordinated access system — a system run by a group of agencies that identifies where to place individuals according to need. The separate courtyards, Coes said, will also allow separation for different needs — such as a wet versus dry courtyard.
The plan is to open the Egbert Street site in August and the Thorne Avenue site in December.
In March, the Human Development Council said there were 276 people experiencing chronic homelessness in the city. Last June that number was 159.
Reardon said the green zones are a result of funding from federal and provincial governments of $3.5 million announced earlier in the year.
Plans for other zones not finalized
In the Housing For All plan's early stages, green zones were planned to be areas in the city that would allow encampments and would have services such as frontline staff, electricity, heat and garbage pickup.
The plan also includes yellow and red zones that haven't been finalized. Yellow zones, according to the plan, are areas that would allow encampments at certain times and red zones are "high risk areas" such as public parks, where encampments wouldn't be permitted.
The new green zones will be near the overnight shelter on Rothesay Avenue. The roughly 60-bed shelter — which Coes said will now be a permanent overnight shelter — operated as an out-of-the-cold response during the winter.
The sites will also be close to an existing encampment near the rail line that crosses Thorne Avenue near the Superstore.
Coun. Gerry Lowe — who represents the ward the zones will be in — was the only councillor to vote against the staff recommendation on Tuesday night.
"I like the idea of the green zones," Lowe said.
"But the location bothers me as a councillor that has to deal with that area. The amount of break-ins there for the last year have been bad, and the garbage that's left behind," he said.
Lowe said he wishes red zones were announced first to have an idea of what areas will have tents removed.