City of Greater Sudbury could be open to lawsuits following homeless eviction in Memorial Park, advocate says

In the summer of 2021, tents started popping up in Sudbury's Memorial Park, a small, square lot of green space in the city's downtown core. 

For nine months, the tent encampment stayed there, at one point being home to more than 70 individuals.

But on April 1, the City of Greater Sudbury closed the encampment, carting off loads of tents, sleeping bags and trash, then erecting a large metal fence along the park's perimeter to ensure another tent city does not materialize.

At a conference held at Laurentian University on Friday, Kaitlin Schwan, the national director of the Women's National Housing & Homelessness Network, said the city's approach may be a violation of human rights.

"For the most part, we've seen pretty punitive responses to encampments," Schwan said. "Really focused on displacing people, evicting encampments and in some cases, picketing and or arresting folks who are experiencing homelessness, which is all very contrary to human rights law."

To help cities understand what their obligations are under international human rights laws, Schwan's organization contributed to the development of an eight-point protocol.

Schwan explains that framework should help cities deal with the major issue of homelessness, while ensuring that those people experiencing homelessness don't fall victim to cruel punishments.

"My understanding, based on what I've heard from folks, is that there has been a real focus on this law and order response," Schwan said. "Folks have largely been displaced, that there has been a shutting off, for example, of water and access to other basic needs."

"Frankly, this is a very serious violation under international human rights law."

Those violations could lead to litigation, Schwan said.

"The city's first obligation is to comply with human rights law, both domestic and international," she said. "In the law, it specifies that human rights standards have to come before city beautification, before ensuring access to leisure activities for the general public."

In April, as teams readied to clean up the site, the City of Greater Sudbury issued a statement to CBC, saying a forced closure will only occur after all support efforts have been attempted without success.

The forced closure includes the metal fence around the encampment at Memorial Park to allow for maintenance work and ground restoration in the coming weeks and months. 

A cleaning contractor will also be procured to clean up the debris left behind, and a garbage bin will remain until the cleanup is finished, the city said.

Before the camp was closed, two city-appointed researchers, Kevin Fitzmaurice and Carol Kauppi, resigned from the committee assembled to deal with the encampment, citing their opposition to the camp's forcible closure.

During Friday's conference, Kauppi said the city was not interested in the committee's feedback or input.

"We were on the committee, we attended the meetings, we made many kinds of requests, and we asked the city to take a human rights approach to the encampments," Kauppi said. "It didn't work and ultimately we did resign from the committee. And at that point they forcibly evicted the residents from the encampments in the downtown core."

The conclusion one could draw, Kauppi said, is that the decision makers at city hall paid more attention to those who had power than those who do not have a voice.

"I think what needs to happen is that there's more attention, more focus, that we are able to hear the voices of those who need supports, rather than eviction," she said.

"An important point is that when people are evicted they have to go somewhere," she said. "Where do they go? They are all here in our city, they just are not permitted downtown. It seems the decision makers in our city don't want to have visible homelessness."

"They are forcing people to be invisible."