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(One wonders whether the Laurier Avenue palace is Jim Watson’s world and the rest just live in it, obediently, but this is a question better taken up by others.)

It was an important week, really, with some valuable lessons.

Firstly, planning committee, with its narrow look at land-use and focus on niggly rules, is not the best venue for a debate on the long-term future of Ottawa’s homeless shelters — though for this specific case, it was the only one.

What, for instance, do we do if the Shepherds of Good Hope needs to expand or move, or the Ottawa Mission, in the same place since 1911? Go through the same exercise, with a couple of faith-based organizations in the driver’s seat, while a good chunk of revenue comes from city taxpayers?

The city paid $13.5 million to emergency shelter operators in 2016. What control, what public input, is earned in exchange?

Look at the Shepherds. It started, literally, with a pot of hot soup and some helping hands working out of St. Brigid’s Church in 1983. Now it has a 254-bed shelter, five supportive housing locations and in the area of 200 employees. Client-beds surpassed 81,000 nights in 2016, with the city contributing some $6.5 million.

This, weirdly, is the state’s position with regard to housing the most vulnerable, those sleeping on the street: Let someone else do it. Is it any wonder, all these years later, that faith-based groups will exert their own muscle, in ways maybe not aligned with public wishes? Have we not, in effect, abdicated leadership? This is hardly how public policy should evolve.