By Alex McCuaig

It’s clear as mud as to how the issue of housing vulnerable Hatters is being dealt with following Thursday’s development and infrastructure meeting with the municipality only succeeding in providing clarity to that fact.

Mayor Linnsie Clark told the development and infrastructure committee she only learned about the plans to utilize the Allowance Avenue Mustard Seed facility as a temporary cold weather shelter from a member of the public. Other attendees, such as local MLA Justin Wright, added comments describing the convoluted state of the issue in the city. Plans to house vulnerable individuals in ATCO trailers located at city-owned property off Kipling Street also came as a surprise to service and public safety organizations.

That meeting can exclusively viewed on the Community TV Facebook page as city officials do not provide post-meeting access to those proceedings while other media outlets choose not to broadcast them.

The fact city officials have not publicly stated there are plans to relocate Mustard Seed facilities came as a surprise to Wright, the local MLA told committee members.

Wright also stated the province, in conjunction with the Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, were prepared to announce a pilot project to deal with the issue to help streamline the process in dealing with navigating chronic homelessness.

“We had a plan in place, we were ready to announce it as to a pilot project which we would present to the city. We called a meeting and then all of this fell apart because of other conversations that derailed the conversation,” Wright told the committee.

Wright said provincial officials had been working with the local housing authority since May on that pilot project which he revealed no details about.

But Wright also expressed some frustration with officials who have been reluctant to communicate to the public the plans to consolidate current Mustard Seed services from two facilities to one in a new location.

“The ADM (assistant deputy minister for Housing) has been connecting with city administration weekly for quite some time now. So, the plans and communication aren’t foreign, they aren’t new, this isn’t a surprise,” Wright told the committee. “What concerns me is the conversations have happened. We have an actionable item which we can speak to which is the relocation of the Mustard Seed to one location and that has not been communicated by the sounds of it by the parties involved.”

Jamie Rogers, manager at Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, told committee members a proposed new site has been located as the current situation isn’t adequate.

“We cannot share where that location is right now. With the delays because of this (conversation), we’ve had to halt those conversations, focus on the emergency need right now given that some folks are sleeping outside – that take priority over any planning in my books,” she said.

There was also skepticism as to whether the current application for rezoning of the Mustard Seed’s application to temporarily house vulnerable Hatters at its Allowance Avenue facility will pass a vote by the municipal planning commission (MPC).

A technical review is anticipated to be completed by the MPC’s next meeting on. Jan. 15.

That decision will be subject to a 21-day appeal period.