Regina seniors’ meeting with housing representatives over safety issues ‘disappointing’

A closed-door meeting was held between the tenants of Mary Helen Herchmer Place, the Regina Housing Authority and the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation after a letter was sent to the province over safety concerns in and around the building.

Tenant Marlene Robins sent the letter along with a petition that had 84 signatures from other tenants. A meeting was set up on Thursday, which Robins hoped would lead to solutions, but she left disappointed.

“We sort of expected that they would address some of the concerns that I had written in the letter,” she said. “(They) just basically took notes. So hopefully … they’ll take back to the minister and hopefully our concerns will be heard.”

Such concerns included having random intruders in their building whom tenants have found sleeping in the stairwells. Earlier this year, tenants discovered a makeshift weapon of a knife attached to a broomstick, along with gun shells. Robins said an incident of assault on a tenant occurred and the list of occurrences keeps growing. That is what drove the tenants to get the province’s attention on the matter of their safety.

“We don’t feel secure,” Robins said. “It just seemed that things sort of went from bad to worse.”

At the closed-door meeting, Robins said a discussion was held on what the tenants can do to stop allowing random people from entering their building. She added that the meeting was mainly a safety presentation from the Regina Housing Authority on what tenants can do to be safer, not a discussion on solutions.

“It’s a much broader issue than that and I think they have to recognize that somewhere down the road before someone actually does get hurt,” she said.

Global News reached out to the Social Services Ministry but did not receive a response before deadline.

&© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.