A cracked foundation: The worsening homelessness crisis in Regina and Saskatoon

Summary

The housing and homelessness crisis in Saskatchewan has worsened: Regina’s houseless population quadrupled in the last 10 years, with a reported count of 1,156 individuals experiencing homelessness in some form and Saskatoon has 1,931 people experiencing homelessness—a nearly 30 per cent increase from 2024’s reported number.

In all their planning materials, the cities acknowledge that major investment and collaboration from all levels of government are required to solve the housing and homelessness crises. Cities are constrained by factors that make it difficult to solve the homelessness crisis:

• One of the major issues facing cities is budgetary constraints.
• Another is that because cities are “creatures of the province”: via the powers of the Municipalities Act, cities are limited in the legislative responses they can implement with respect to many of the root causes of poverty.

The government of Saskatchewan is not undertaking sufficient actions to prevent people from falling into homelessness. Between rising rents, declining social welfare, and a lack of affordable housing, people are not being given the help they need to stay in stable housing that they can afford month after month. To put it simply, a house cannot stand on a cracked foundation.

Life is hard for renters in Saskatchewan and the data shows that it’s getting harder: In 2026, both Saskatoon and Regina posted month-over-month rent increases, bucking the national trend of declining average rent prices to the tune of a 26.2 per cent increase for the cost of a one-bedroom unit over three years—the highest increase in the country.

Despite this, the government of Saskatchewan has repeatedly rejected calls for any kind of rent control legislation. The issues of rising rents and a lack of protections are compounded by Saskatchewan’s low minimum wage and insufficient social assistance programs:

• Saskatchewan’s minimum wage, even after the planned October increase of 35 cents, remains the second lowest in the country.
• The rental wage (calculated as being “the hourly wage needed to afford rent while working a standard 40-hour week and spending 30 per cent of income on housing”) for someone working for minimum wage in Regina and Saskatoon means they would need to earn over $22 an hour, equivalent to working 1.5 full-time jobs at minimum wage.

An audit of social housing in Saskatchewan shows that there are 16,988 social housing units in the province, 2,795 in Regina and 2,422 in Saskatoon—falling far short of need.

These factors are uniquely the realm and responsibilities of the government of Saskatchewan, not the federal nor municipal governments. Without adequate protections for renters, increases to social assistance that reflect the true cost of living, or an increase in the supply of social housing, at-risk persons will continue to fall into homelessness.

There are proven solutions: Housing First programs and focusing on homelessness prevention. Across many jurisdictions, including major success in Helsinki, Housing First programs are proven to get people off the streets and keep them stable. Once that need has been met as a precondition of care, then people can access the support they need. This data-driven model has been proven to work, with cities like Medicine Hat being able to cost-effectively eradicate chronic homelessness through this approach. Homelessness prevention requires systems to be in place to help people stay in the housing they are already in. The government of Saskatchewan must implement rent control policies and tenant protections, provide social assistance that reflects the true cost of living, and expand the supply of deeply affordable social housing in the province.

Introduction

Over the last decade, the housing and homelessness crisis in Saskatchewan has worsened, with few meaningful actions taken by governments to seriously address it. The most recent Point-in-Time (PiT) count showed that Regina’s houseless population quadrupled in the last 10 years, with a reported count of 1,156 individuals experiencing homelessness in some form (Namerind, 2026). Saskatoon has seen a similar worsening of the homelessness crisis, with the most recent point-in-time count released in early 2026 identifying 1,931 people experiencing homelessness, a nearly 30 per cent increase from 2024’s reported number (City of Saskatoon, 2026). The number of encampments have also risen in spite of efforts to remove them, and the overall costs of homelessness continue on a sharp upward trajectory.

Despite the intensifying crisis, the Government of Saskatchewan’s response to the issue remains weak. Rents in Saskatchewan continue to rise with few to no tenant protections in place. There exists no effective rent control legislation, making the province an outlier compared to the rest of the country. Saskatchewan’s low minimum wage, coupled with the province’s two income assistance programs—whose benefits are woefully inadequate—make it increasingly difficult to keep up with unaffordable market housing costs. Even with the scheduled minimum wage increase planned for October 2026, going from $15.35 an hour to $15.70 an hour, Saskatchewan’s minimum wage will remain the second lowest in Canada. While social housing does exist in the province, units are being left vacant and demolished, with little effort made to replenish the supply, much less expand it. One only needs to look at 1100 Wascana Block, a 24-unit social housing complex built in Regina in 2021. After a fire in April 2024 that severely damaged nine of the 24 units and displaced all occupants, the complex was boarded up and left vacant. When community leaders brought this to attention in December 2025, the complex was then demolished without community consultations, leaving an empty lot that still stands, with no plans to rebuild (Vera, 2026).

While the municipal governments of Regina and Saskatoon have been engaged and partnered with key community partners and Indigenous organizations (the majority of individuals experiencing homelessness in Saskatchewan are Indigenous), city councils do not have the resources, nor access to law-making power, to materially address the root causes of the homelessness crisis. Meanwhile, the provincial government steadfastly refuses to implement rent control, presides over insufficient social services benefits to cover food and rental costs, and severely neglects expanding affordable social housing.

This paper explores three themes: how governments have responded to the crisis, what are the significant gaps in policy and programs related to prevention and housing first, and what new initiatives are possible.

Housing and homelessness plans in Regina and Saskatoon

In recent years, both Regina and Saskatoon—the largest municipalities in Saskatchewan—have worked to update their housing and homelessness plans. This report will compare the two cities’ housing and homelessness plans, the governance structures charged with implementation, and some of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

In Regina, the last city-wide strategic homelessness plan created by the municipal government was Reaching Home: Regina Homelessness Plan 2019-2024, which was developed jointly with Indigenous communities, leaders, and organizations. The plan maintains a focus on supporting housing services, with investments also made in prevention and shelter diversion programs, as well as coordination and data collection. The primary measures of success for the Homeless Serving System are: year-over-year decreases in the number of unsheltered and emergency sheltered persons, decreases in the duration of homelessness experienced, decreases in the length of stay in emergency homeless shelters, and bringing the percentage of persons who return to homelessness with 12 months of exiting it to <10 per cent (Regina Homelessness Plan, 2018). Since 2024, the City of Regina conducted a Housing Needs Assessment and is in the process of finalizing the City of Regina Housing Strategy for 2027-2032. With the ongoing consultation process, the plan is not final at this point, but the city has published a draft of the report to their website. Of note is the line that states plainly that “[t]he City is not involved in the operation of transitional, supportive, community and affordable housing” (p. 4, Regina Housing Strategy, 2026). The plan points out that the city will work with community partners on homelessness initiatives, but is not responsible for financing and implementing the majority of them.

Saskatoon’s Strategic Homelessness Action Plan (SHAP) was spearheaded by Saskatoon’s Housing Initiatives Partnership (SHIP) in 2016. The plan accounted for four primary target areas: system coordination, increasing housing support services, homelessness prevention, and solving homelessness through housing. Since that time, SHAP has been undergoing a renewal in order to update the plan to better serve the community. The City of Saskatoon, meanwhile, has undertaken a number of housing and homelessness initiatives designed to address all manner of housing needs in the city. These include the Housing Action Plan (created as a requirement for receiving federal Housing Accelerator Fund money) and Saskatoon’s Affordable Housing Strategy 2025-2030. Informed by the City of Saskatoon’s PiT count, the 2024 Housing Needs Assessment, and aligned with SHAP, the Affordable Housing Strategy is integrated with Saskatoon’s city-wide plans and seeks to address the entire housing continuum (i.e., the spectrum of diverse forms of housing). This integration of plans across the entire municipal ecosystem, as well as clear descriptions of the role that the municipal government plays in making housing accessible, is a strength of the planning system, but it is also a slow and cumbersome bureaucratic approach. Despite planning systems being in place for a decade, the sharp rise in PiT count numbers demonstrate that success indicators set out in the various plans are not being met.

When the City of Saskatoon’s strategic plan was announced in August, a member of the planning team revealed a weakness in the ability of the city to accomplish its first goal identified as homelessness reduction. “The plan says at least 113,00 people in Saskatoon are renting and that renters are three times more likely to become homelessness. Nearly one in five Saskatoon residents earns $42,500 or less a year, and the maximum monthly rent affordable for those making $17,000 to $42,500 a year is $1,063.” (CBC) When the average rent for a one bedroom unit in Regina and Saskatoon exceeds $1,400 a month (CMHC, 2025), it becomes increasingly obvious that affordability issues are out running the ability of municipalities to maintain control of the homelessness issue.

How are homelessness responsibilities divided?

In all their planning materials, the cities acknowledge that major investment and collaboration from all levels of government are required to solve the housing and homelessness crises. The housing crisis is a nationwide issue in Canada, and there are different responsibilities relegated to each level of government. Because of this, it can be difficult to identify gaps in the system without first developing a clear picture of which actors are responsible for what. To do this, we need to ask: what levers of power can municipalities access in this crisis and how are they being supported by the federal and provincial governments?

At a national level, the federal Reaching Home strategy was launched in 2019 as a means of preventing and reducing homelessness, supporting the 10-year National Housing Strategy. The primary goal of this plan is to work directly with communities and municipalities to deliver funding for community housing and homelessness projects, including supporting affordable housing providers, improving data collection efforts, and investing in research (INFC, 2025). This plan also introduced a federal requirement for the implementation of a Coordinated Access System (CAS). This is a method of standardizing and streamlining access to housing and homelessness supports in a given community, coordinated across the entire network of actors in the system. The CAS is a means of streamlining intake into the housing support system through standardized access structures, assessment and prioritization mechanisms, and effective mapping and data collection (CAEH, 2018). On the housing side, the Housing Accelerator Fund was launched as a way to boost housing supply through zoning changes and bylaws. While this fund is creating a number of construction starts, it is not designed to address the root causes of poverty, instead focusing on creating market housing supply.

Through the Reaching Home Strategy, the federal government reaches out directly to designated community entities. These are the organizations that are responsible for the administering of funds delivered through the strategy and are directed by a Community Advisory Board. In Regina, Namerind Housing Corporation, an Indigenous-owned social enterprise and affordable housing provider, acts as the designated community entity (CE) while in Saskatoon, Saskatoon Housing Initiatives Partnership is the CE. Whereas Namerind is also the lead organization responsible for managing the Coordinated Access System in Regina and performing (PiT) counts, the CAS in Saskatoon is led by Métis-Nation Saskatchewan. In addition to these city-specific organizations, there is also a province-wide information sharing system required by the Reaching Home Strategy—the Homeless Individuals and Families Information System (HIFIS). This tool streamlines data collection and sharing, enabling policy-makers to effectively respond to the challenges of reducing homelessness through timely data. Through the use of the CE/CAB direction setting, the CAS standardizing intake, and the HIFIS for information gathering, the Reaching Home Strategy attempts to ensure that municipalities have the tools they need to collect the necessary data and create policy to identify and address the crisis at the municipal level.

Unfortunately, cities are constrained by a number of factors that make it difficult for municipal governments to effectively solve the homelessness crisis. One of the major issues facing cities is budgetary constraints, especially for major investments in infrastructure funding. Putting into perspective the resources available to these jurisdictions, the total City of Regina budget for 2026-27 is $676 million, versus $22.2 billion for the total budget of the government of Saskatchewan. Another is that because cities are “creatures of the province” via the powers of the Municipalities Act, cities are limited in the legislative responses they can implement with respect to many of the root causes of poverty.

The government of Saskatchewan is the primary provider of social benefits, such as income support. The province provides two primary social assistance programs: Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) and Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID). SIS was introduced in 2019, meant to replace the Saskatchewan Assistance Program (SAP) and the Transitional Employment Allowance (TEA) over time. These programs have been “reformed” several times and are intended to support claimants by helping them to meet basic needs, such as shelter and food, on top of additional income they earn. The provincial government is also the primary provider of low-income housing and is responsible for setting housing policy across the province. As per the mandate of the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation, a Treasury Board Crown Corporation, SHC “provides housing and housing services to people who could not otherwise afford or access adequate, safe and secure shelter, while recognizing the marketplace as the primary housing provider in the province” (SHC, 2026). Because cities lack direct control over the stock of affordable housing within their jurisdiction—which is a serious impediment to their ability respond to the homelessness issue—municipalities are left to do data collection, community safety and enforcement (clearing encampments, policing, combatting overdoses) and providing and administering emergency shelters (funded, in large part, but sparsely, by the province). Many of the cities’ actions do not solve homelessness, nor the poverty that keeps people out of housing.

What is the provincial government doing to address the crisis?

At this point, the countermeasures being taken to address the existing crisis of homelessness at the city level—with support from the federal government—have been well documented. Cities are being given resources to monitor and track the issue, as well as the means to standardize intake procedures across the network of organizations working together to solve homelessness. Despite that, research has repeatedly indicated that this is not enough to end the cycle of poverty that keeps people out of housing nor to prevent more new people entering the system. This is because, at its most basic level, the government of Saskatchewan is not undertaking sufficient actions to prevent people from falling into homelessness. Between rising rents, declining social welfare, and a lack of affordable housing, people are not being given the help they need to stay in stable housing that they can afford month after month. To put it simply, a house cannot stand on a cracked foundation.

Life is hard for renters in Saskatchewan and the data shows that it’s getting harder. In 2026, both Saskatoon and Regina posted month-over-month rent increases, bucking the national trend of declining average rent prices to the tune of a 26.2 per cent increase for the cost of a one-bedroom unit over three years (CKRM, 2026)—the highest increase in the country over this time. This represents almost 50 consecutive months of rent increases. Despite this, the government of Saskatchewan has repeatedly rejected calls from the provincial NDP for any kind of rent control legislation, including tying rent increases to the Consumer Price Index and the rate of inflation. Because of this gap in legislation, landlords are allowed to raise rental costs with impunity, free to raise rents so long as sufficient notice is given. A distinct lack of renter protections in Saskatchewan makes staying in rental housing precarious, even as the renter population continues to increase in the province and competition for affordable units heats up. In June, the vacancy rate for rental units in Regina was only 2.7 per cent—a figure classified by Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) as being “unhealthy” (CKRM, June 2026). Despite the record number of housing starts, the rising costs of construction and market forces will repeatedly result in premium-priced market units, all while rental costs continue to rise for renters.

The issues of rising rents and a lack of protections are compounded by Saskatchewan’s low minimum wage and insufficient social assistance programs. As stated above, Saskatchewan’s minimum wage, even after the planned October increase of 35 cents, remains the second lowest in the country. According to research done by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) on the rental wage (calculated as being “the hourly wage needed to afford rent while working a standard 40-hour week and spending 30 per cent of income on housing”), someone working for minimum wage in Regina and Saskatoon would need to earn over $22 an hour, equivalent to working 1.5 full-time jobs at minimum wage (CCPA, 2024). Despite such low wages, Saskatchewan’s social assistance programs do not provide an adequate level of support for those who require it most.

Through the SIS program, single recipients are granted up to $375 a month on Adult Basic Benefit, and $675 a month through the Shelter Benefit (for those living in Regina/Saskatoon). Benefits and recipient categories are tracked using Maytree’s data on social services. Using data from Maytree’s Social Assistance Summaries, unattached singles were the majority of SIS and SAID recipients (64 per cent and 86 per cent respectively) (Maytree, 2026). Unattached singles are faced with deep poverty. It’s expected this monthly stipend is spent across shelter, food, household goods, etc., but this is simply not enough to maintain stable access to affordable housing. In Food Banks Canada’s poverty report card, Saskatchewan received a D+, with Fs being given for a household’s fixed costs as a percentage of income and in the amount of government support recipients who say rates are insufficient to keep up with cost of living. The data shows that “[p]people are spending 61% of their income on essentials—the highest rate in the Prairie region and among the worst nationally” (Food Banks Canada, 2026). The provincial government has noted that benefits through their social assistance programs are increasing monthly, but SIS and SAID are integrating telephone and laundry benefits, which means that the total amount of benefits is increasing, but only through consolidation of existing revenue streams. Even though the total amount per month shows up as being higher, the actual impact of the increase is negligible for people already receiving these benefits. Between the low minimum wage and insufficient benefits, vulnerable renters are caught up in a situation where to stay in housing on a single income is highly precarious, and too often becoming more likely to fall out of their housing and onto the streets.

But what about social housing? The Social Housing Program is provided through the province and is intended to ensure that people who do not otherwise have the means to afford suitable housing can do so at an affordable rate (rent is adjusted to 30 per cent of the renter’s income, ensuring it remains within reach). This is administered through the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation, a Treasury Board Crown, and units are managed through local agencies on behalf of the SHC. In Saskatoon, this is the Saskatoon Housing Authority (SHA) and in Regina, it’s the Regina Housing Authority (RHA). The SHA and RHA both manage a large number of units dispersed throughout the city, renting to families, seniors, and low-income claimants. An audit of social housing in Saskatchewan shows that there are 16,988 social housing units in the province, 2,795 in Regina and 2,422 in Saskatoon (SHC, 2026). These numbers do not come close to meeting the need for deeply affordable housing in the cities, considering the thousands of people who are currently without a home. Unfortunately, at time of writing, over 200 units in each city are unoccupied (SHC, 2026), with no indication that more are being built or planned to be built. Most of the housing starts in the province, either through the Housing Accelerator Fund or otherwise, are going towards creating market housing, such as condominiums or single-family detached homes, instead of dense and affordable social housing. This has exacerbated the need for social housing as more units fall into disrepair or disuse without an equal drive to create new spaces.

These factors are uniquely the realm and responsibilities of the government of Saskatchewan, not the federal nor municipal governments. Without adequate protections for renters, increases to social assistance that reflect the true cost of living, or an increase in the supply of social housing, at-risk persons will continue to fall into homelessness. Then, when they become the responsibility of municipal organizations without the capacity to increase the housing supply themselves, the only options left are monitoring, enforcement, and cycling them through the medical or correctional systems—at a much greater cost to the province.

The proven solutions: Housing First programs and prevention

The government of Saskatchewan’s Provincial Approach to Homelessness (PATH) was created in 2023, granting $40.2 million to municipalities, later expanded in 2025 to invest an additional $20 million. The investment is allocated to not just Regina and Saskatoon, but also to a number of other cities in the province. This money was put towards creating 215 total new supportive housing models, increasing emergency shelter spaces (as well as shelter spaces for those with complex needs), and supporting community-led safety and outreach programs (GOS, 2023) (2025). Expanding supportive housing is important, but the number of spaces created does not reflect the reality nor the scale of the issue. Also, expanding shelter spaces does not end homelessness, it only furthers the amount of time people spend without access to secure housing. While these investments demonstrate a willingness to act towards reducing homelessness, they do not have the political will to permanently end homelessness.

So, what are possible solutions? More than any other methods, what’s proven to work in addressing the homelessness crisis are Housing First programs and focusing on homelessness prevention. Bringing people experiencing homelessness through the medical or carceral systems and putting them back into the streets without supports only exacerbates the issue and can enable a progression into chronic homelessness (defined as going six or more months without a permanent shelter). Across many jurisdictions, including major success in Helsinki, Finland, Housing First programs are proven to get people off the streets and keep them stable. At its core, housing first models recognize that the most immediate need for those living on the streets or moving between shelters is finding stable, secure housing. Once that need has been met as a precondition of care, then people can access the support they need. Wraparound social service support is also key.  This data-driven model has been proven to work, with cities like Medicine Hat being able to cost-effectively eradicate chronic homelessness through this approach. When calculated, “[t]he approximate cost of homelessness on public systems (per individual) is estimated to be between $66,000-$120,000 annually. The cost of providing housing with supports is estimated to be between $12,000-$34,000 annually” (At Home in Medicine Hat, 2019). When people need housing, the most effective way to help them is not to force them through rigorous multi-stage approvals to first access temporary shelters—it’s by providing housing and following up with support.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is also much more cost effective to ensure that people don’t lose access to their housing in the first place. Homelessness prevention requires systems to be in place to help people stay in the housing they are already in. Whether that be through updating and maintaining the existing housing supply without letting units fall into disrepair, or bolstering social services like rent support, prevention models can take on a variety of forms while still making sure that people do not fall through the cracks. Anti-eviction measures and tenant protections like rent control go a long way towards ensuring deeply affordable and stable housing. In Saskatchewan, landlords are allowed to evict tenants in any season, even in -30°C weather, and evictions are not always used as a last resort option (Tank, 2020). This places evictees in real danger from the harsh conditions of Saskatchewan’s climate, at a time when shelters are most likely to be at full capacity or overflowing. At the same time, increased social services can create the sort of deeply affordable housing that avoids the need for evictions in many cases. Subsidized rent is a much cheaper alternative than the cost of the resources required to treat and police people who are living in encampments or on the street. With a wider net of social assistance and renter protections, the governments responsible for ending homelessness can deter homelessness at its source—a loss of housing.

Conclusion

When we are talking about the multi-level governmental approach to the housing and homelessness crisis, it simply isn’t enough for cities to rely on federal grants like the Housing Accelerator Fund to increase the housing supply, especially if this funding goes towards building market housing. Building more market housing will increase the overall supply, but it doesn’t target the needs of the people in vulnerable housing situations, nor those who are currently experiencing homelessness. The cities are responsible for much of the day-to-day strategic policy for managing the worst and most visible parts of the crisis, but the foundations to prevent homelessness lie within provincial authority. As such, the government of Saskatchewan—with its budget of $22.6 billion—must implement rent control policies and tenant protections, provide social assistance that reflects the true cost of living, and expand the supply of deeply affordable social housing in the province. Through these interventions, governments at all levels can work together more productively and move towards the proven to be effective models of homelessness prevention and Housing First policies. What matters more than anything is ensuring that everyone has a home that they can feel secure in—nothing less than that.

Works cited

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City of Regina, Reaching home: Regina homelessness plan 2019-2024, 2019.

CMHC, 2025 Rental Market Report, 2025, https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/market-reports/rental-market-reports-major-centres.

Food Banks Canada, Report Card-Food Banks Canada, May 13, 2026, https://foodbankscanada.ca/poverty-report-cards/report-card/sk/#overall-grade.

About Saskatchewan Housing Corporation, Saskatchewan Housing Corporation, Government of Saskatchewan, 2019, https://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/government-structure/crown-corporations/treasury-board-crowns/saskatchewan-housing-corporation/about-shc.

Marc Lee, David Macdonald, Making rent: The CCPA’s rental wage update 2024, CCPA, 2025, https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/making-rent-the-ccpas-rental-wage-update-2024/.

 Maytree, Social Assistance Summaries, Saskatchewan, 2026, https://maytree.com/changing-systems/data-measuring/social-assistance-summaries/saskatchewan/.

Medicine Hat Community Housing Society, At Home in Medicine Hat: Our plan to end homelessness, 2019, Retrieved September 7, 2026, from https://mhchs.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Year-9-Progress-Report.pdf.

Namerind Housing Corporation, Regina’s Homelessness Data Dashboard, 2026, https://www.namerindhousing.ca/.

Oldhues, M., “Regina rental market rises as national rents decline, driven by migration and tight vacancy rate,” 620 CKRM, 2026, https://www.620ckrm.com/2026/06/16/regina-rental-market-rises-as-national-rents-decline-driven-by-migration-and-tight-vacancy-rate/.

Tank, P., “Questions about data loom over Saskatoon homelessness action plan”, CBC News, 2026, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/homeless-homelessness-poverty-housing-city-hall-9.7278476.

Tank, P. “Saskatchewan to remove ban on non-urgent evictions on Aug. 4”, 2020, The Star Phoenix, https://thestarphoenix.com/news/saskatchewan-news/saskatchewan-to-remove-ban-on-non-urgent-evictions-on-aug-4/.

Vera, C., “People demand more social housing in Regina as homeless encampment grows”, 2026, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/social-housing-unoccupied-encampments-affordable-living-9.7298983.

About the author

Noelle Greuel

Noelle Greuel (She/Her/Elle) is a first-year graduate student at Carleton University in the School of Public Policy and Administration. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Public Policy and Administration with a Climate Change Specialization.