Province still can’t find operator for Summerside shelter

The land is here, but so far the province hasn’t found anyone to operate the emergency shelter in the city. The province had hoped to have it open this winter, but there’s still no timeline, something that concerns advocates. It is by the grace of God and pure luck that we have not lost anybody on Prince Edward Island this winter. Advocates for people struggling with homelessness in Summerside think the province should run the facility itself if it can’t find someone else to do it, like the emergency shelter in Charlottetown. If the fastest course of action is for the province to step up and say, look, let’s just take control of this for now to address the need that we have now, I think that would be a suitable solution. Summerside did approve A10 bed emergency shelter for here at 25 Frank Mellis St. back in January, but they still want the province to provide a site plan, security plan and who will be operating the facility. Summerside Mayor Dan Couture says there hasn’t been much communication from the province. We’ve we’ve been waiting. We’re waiting to hear back from the province who they are looking to select as an operator and when they do we hope they’ll be back as soon as possible. These are the modular units the province is using for the shelter, which the province says could be expanded to 25 beds in the future. Been quite a process to identify the operator and we had to go back and ask all of our opponents for some additional information. So we are at the point that we should be able to finalize an operator. Here shortly. Lance says that’s the reason things have taken so long. He says the plan is to submit a building permit to the city of Summerside later this week. Tony Davis, CBC News, Summerside.