The news came via a March 8 letter from the province's Social Services Minister Paul Merriman to Southwest Youth Emergency Shelter Board President Shaun Hanna that the upcoming budget will not include funding for Dorie's House in Swift Current.

The shelter for male and female youth that are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless is run by Southwest YES.

It opened in January of 2017 and the pilot project Hanna said was meant to show there was a need for the shelter ran until it was cut short in October.

The project never secured funding from the provincial government, and the house on the corner of Herbert Street East and 2nd Avenue Northeast was built from private-sector donations of time and labour.

In the letter, Merriman said that the "Ministry of Social Services reviews all funding proposals it receives from a provincial perspective considering available resources, current program needs and strategic priorities. The Ministry has determined that there is not a substantial need to fund another residential program in the Swift Current area; therefore, your proposal was not prioritized for funding in 2018-19."

Merriman went on to write that the ministry's information "shows that youth are receiving adequate supports through other programs being funded in Swift Current."

Merriman toured the facility in late September, and Hanna said he felt things were moving in a positive direction. When the letter came, he said he obviously didn't like the decision, but more concerning were some facts in the letter.

"I'm disappointed in the decision," Hanna said. "And as for the content of the letter, there's many points in it that we feel are demonstrably misinformed or outright false and so we're actually in the process of drafting a response to that letter, which is the letter that we have."

Hanna said there isn't a shelter in the area that takes in females under the age of 18.

"The reasoning behind not funding a project like this has been over the last 40 years that there is no need for it, and to what extent there is a need for it, it's being channeled and the very fact along that there are no ways of women getting help - especially in the #MeToo era - that in itself should be a pressing crisis for the officials. At least that's my opinion."

Hanna added, "when we're talking about youth homelessness we're talking about youth that either don't have a place to stay, so they might be couch surfing with friends, or, and this is generally more the case, that they have inappropriate housing - so that they're trading housing for whatever they might be trading housing for. That's not just limited to young ladies. That certainly happens with young men all the time. Just as an aside, if you can imagine what someone's family life might be like to put themselves into harm's way like that, it's shocking in many cases. Dorie's House is really meant to offer an alternative."

The budget - which will be the first under Premier Scott Moe - is set to be released April 10. Barring any dramatic change in the near future it won't have money set aside for Dorie's House, but Hanna said they're still planning on reopening the shelter - though it would certainly be more difficult without government funding.

In the meantime, Hanna said they have a meeting set up with a government official this week. He wouldn't say which government official.