Tent inhabitants on sidewalks and heritage sites need to 'move immediately,' city says

The city says anyone living in tents on sidewalks, at heritage sites or near schools and child-care centres needs to "move immediately" now that a Superior Court judge has lifted an injunction preventing encampments from being dismantled.

Street outreach workers will spend the next week assessing people living in tents at Whitehern and Ferguson Avenue North, among other locations, says Paul Johnson, the city's general manager of healthy and safe communities. They'll assess the person's needs and determine what is needed to get a person into housing.

Those with lower "acuity" will be housed within two weeks, the city says. As many as one-third have higher needs and may be in tents indefinitely, although encampments can only be up to five people and not on roads, sidewalks or designated heritage sites.

That means "those in prohibited areas will need to move immediately," the city said in a media release, pledging to take "a personalized approach to individuals with complex needs when enforcing city bylaws."

"For those currently encamped in now prohibited areas, they will be working with outreach staff to move to shelter within the next seven days."

This move comes as part of an agreement reached last week with the Hamilton Social Medicine Response Team (Hamsmart), Keeping Six, the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic and Ross & McBride LLP. That group obtained the injunction on July 30 to prevent the city from abruptly dismantling encampments. 

In a pandemic, the group said, it's better to be able to keep track of street-involved patients. At one point, Hamsmart and Keeping Six collected and distributed donated tents to be able to treat people on site.

Some councillors have criticized that, including Coun. Chad Collins (Ward 5, Centennial), who said during Wednesday's general issues committee meeting that this "was not organically created."

"This was artificially created by activists," he said. "We incurred a lot of cost … It created a lot of anxiety."

Even with the agreement, which he voted against last week, "we have agreed to let people to reside in parks."

Dr. Jill Wiwcharuk, who works with Hamsmart and the Shelter Health Network, disputes Collins's characterization of it. Encampments are a national issue, she said, and some on Ferguson Avenue North have been waiting for days to talk to someone about housing.

"There seems to be a narrative that we have encouraged people to live in tents," she said. "My No. 1 job as a physician is to try to get a roof over their head, because homelessness is a health-care issue. The moment someone has a roof over their head, their health improves. Every single time, I'm trying to help them access indoor options.

"This was not created artificially."

All hands on deck

Johnson said people sleeping in tents isn't a new in Hamilton, but it has been more visible during the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, the city has said, there were a combined 120 tents in more than a dozen locations.

The city also says that since the pandemic began, it's invested more than $1 million on more emergency shelter spaces, over and above the $7.6 million in the city budget. The city says it's also seen greater demand on paramedic and fire services, with an 83-per cent increase to paramedic calls at FirstOntario Centre and 13 per cent to the Ferguson encampment, and another $60,000 spent in additional waste collection services.

Wiwcharuk said she's hopeful that the city will compassionately find people housing, including letting them gather their belongings before they take down encampments.

"Our agreement was that when Ferguson is dismantled, it's not going to happen in a way that causes harm," she said. "When bulldozers come in and take people's possessions away, that's harm.

"It's my hope that within seven days, there's only going to be a couple of tents left. But for that to happen, there truly has to be an all-hands-on-deck approach."