When Janelle Pedersen looks at Buffalo Narrows’s first housing development in more than 20 years, she sees a future gated community where elders sit on front porches, children play, and neighbours help each other stay healthy and sober.
Just 13 months ago, the site was undeveloped land. Now, people are moving in and beginning to call the 29 new transitional housing units home.
Created by the Buffalo Narrows Friendship Centre, the initiative “isn’t a housing program,” according to Pedersen, the centre’s executive director. Residents receive wraparound care, including on-site addictions counselling, budgeting classes and food programs —all Indigenous-led, culturally specific and trauma-informed.
“We do already have a waiting list,” Pedersen said, “Once we let the community and surrounding communities know that we are open … it filled up so fast.”
The hope is for the nearly-$10-million project to help fill service gaps in the northern village of Buffalo Narrows — 430 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon — where there is no detox centre and residents must travel hours away to places like Pine House, Lloydminster, North Battleford, Prince Albert or Saskatoon for rehab programs.
Before the new transitional housing units opened, those who were able to get a space in a treatment program often had no choice, after all that travel and hard work, but to go back to the same living situation they were in before rehab, Pedersen said.
“You go back to the same lifestyle, the same group of friends, the same habits.”
The vision was to create a safe space to return to in Buffalo Narrows, she said.
“This is their home. They want to be home. So this is their safe home that they can go to.”
Pedersen said she hopes the program — one of the furthest north of its kind — can become a model for other northern Saskatchewan communities.
Averie Sanders, 26, has been sober for more than three months and was one of the first residents to move into one of the new units.
Born and raised in Buffalo Narrows, Sanders said she struggled with drugs and alcohol for years, drinking every day for about 10 years, often until she was sick.
“I was drinking at school, I was drinking alone,” she said, “My face started swelling up and stuff, and I took myself to the hospital.”
When she couldn’t get into treatment there, she went to a different hospital, then travelled more than five hours to La Ronge for detox. She was then transported directly to a 10-day treatment program in Pinehouse.
It was her first time going to detox and getting sober.
“I didn’t have to leave and see my family and then try again,” Sanders said. “It was straight through.”
A few weeks after returning home to Buffalo Narrows, she was able to move into a unit in the supportive housing program.
“Having this safe place … it changed a lot for me,” Sanders said.
When you get sober, “you have to change everything,” she said — your location, your friends.
“If I went back to the house I was in, I would have went right back to the same thing.”
Moving to supportive housing, receiving the wraparound care and living with neighbours who understand what she is going through has felt like “doors opening,” Sanders said.
She said she feels safe.
“It’s very quiet. It’s very homey,” she said, “I don’t think I have felt content ever, until I moved here.”
The Friendship Centre interviews prospective residents, using a six-category point system to triage needs and determine how the centre can support them. Sometimes, an applicant’s needs are beyond what program staff are trained for, Pedersen said.
Residents need to be sober for at least 30 days to be accepted, but the program is also open to those facing mental health challenges and other triggers.
The majority of people who apply are housing insecure, living in unstable environments, couch surfing or even sleeping outside, centre staff said. Evaluating the risk of homelessness and safety of an applicant’s current housing is part of the point system.
Those at immediate risk, who are most impacted by systemic inequities, receive first priority.
Pedersen describes the model as a partnership between residents, staff and the broader Buffalo Narrows community. Residents must commit to taking part in programming and contributing to the community they’re joining.
The friendship centre, in turn, commits to working with the new resident to support their individual needs, including helping them find funding to afford the program fees.
That relationship and the wraparound services continue even after residents leave, Pedersen said.
The travel required to attend rehab programs and the limited number of beds for northern programs is a barrier for people getting sober, Pedersen said.
The lack of available family support can leave parents entering treatment wondering who will care for their children, she said.
“If you’re a mother or a parent that’s struggling with addictions then that’s what holds you back a lot of the time, because you’re leaving your whole family and then who knows when you’re going to be back?”
The Buffalo Narrows Friendship Centre Housing and Wellness Program can accommodate entire families, with two-bedroom units with bunk beds.
At the centre of the housing complex, several wheelchair accessible units will accommodate elders. Pedersen noted that when family members are struggling with addiction, elders can be taken advantage of and pushed out of their own homes by their younger relatives.
“That’s why we incorporated elders into this unit, so they have a safe place.”
Elders in the program can get long-term housing and support, and also provide cultural teachings to residents, including land-based healing.
“Our elders are our knowledge keepers,” she said. “I believe that cultural aspect of it, to rebuild this community, is very important because we need to go back to our roots.”
New supportive housing community in Buffalo Narrows gives people the help they need
Pedersen said there’s still a lot of work to be done on the site, including building a dedicated cultural support centre with staff, narcotics and alcoholics anonymous meetings, and other programming.
The Friendship Centre is still trying to find funding for the building, and is in talks with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s Affordable Housing Fund to finalize a loan for the $3.2 million needed for construction.
Once the support centre is built, the community will be gated and an 11 p.m. curfew will be put in place.
Pedersen said the Friendship Centre also hopes to be able to help address a ‘critical gap’ in the north: the wait after 24-hour detox programs, where delays in getting a bed in often-full treatment programs regularly leads to relapse.
“If they say that there’s no bed available, then you’re on your own, until you get enough courage or enough strength to work on yourself again and then you try again,” Pedersen said.
“It is a very vicious cycle.”
In the future, the Buffalo Narrows Friendship Centre hopes to work with the province’s social services and justice ministries to layer in more intensive clinical and family reunification support, said Melissa Smith, a consultant working with the centre.
Years ago, it took new resident Brenda Lee-Hastings “three to four” tries to get sober. Had she been able to come to a similar supportive housing program during that time, Lee-Hastings says it would have been different.
“I think I would have gotten sober the first try,” she said.
Lee-Hastings said many people are held back from asking for help by shame or fear. In her new home, sobriety is “in the open,” there are resources and people you can rely on.
“You don’t have to face it alone. You don’t have to be scared. It’s OK to get sober,” she said.
“We haven’t even begun to even scrape the surface of the things that this place is going to become.”
