Ending Chronic Homelessness

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, my biggest concern is around access and transportation. That location is nearly completely inaccessible without a car. Do they plan on building a sidewalk or are they just going to accept an attrition rate of a few deaths a year walking to and from the location?

To respond to the observation about proximity to the landfill, it’s actually past the dump and even further from anything that can actually be called part of the city.

There is a sidewalk on the north side of Erb across the Costco property, but there is a long gap at the hydro right-of-way, and nothing on the south side except little bits of sidewalk at the roundabouts which provide access to the landfill gates.

I think if we’re going to put the shelter way out here, at a minimum a south-side sidewalk needs to be built from Fire Tower Rd. to where it starts up at the shops near Ira Needles Blvd. However, the sidewalk must not be charged to the shelter budget; there ought to be a sidewalk anyway.

But I still think that we need to create more walkable parts of the city. People who are using shelter resources are unlikely to have a vehicle.

I agree that there should be a sidewalk. I think there are significant constraints under the hydro right of way. Or more specifically, regional engineers would rather cut active transportation options than vehicle lanes so that's why there are "constraints". But even if you solve that, the site is so far west of any other part of the city it really would be building a sidewalk just for that site.

In any case, it would be good if it also got serviced by transit (and you know, transit was free also). It's a 20 minute walk just to get to Ira Needles Rd. and a TWO HOUR walk to get downtown.

Frankly, bikes would help, it's a 35 minute bike ride downtown on mostly safe infra. But you still run into the same problem where Erb St. is extremely dangerous.

Honestly, the optics of this are kind of bad. I really have mixed feelings here.