People living in Thunder Bay's tent encampments face another challenge — neighbours who want them gone
City council hears from residents concerned about safety, hygiene in summer encampments
Complaints about encampments for homeless people in Thunder Bay have sparked debate at city council about how best to deal with them.
At least six people have been sleeping on the city's streets this winter, according to Elevate NWO, a harm-reduction agency in the city. Encampments aren't new in Thunder Bay, but they're far more common in the summertime and have been subject to violent attacks.
In one of the most publicized incidents, a pickup truck drove over a tent where someone was believed to be sleeping, in October 2021.
At Monday night's council meeting, Susan Lester told councillor she was concerned with the encampments that had cropped up along the McVicar Creek trail – which is essentially in her front yard — last summer.
From June to October 2022, she said her neighbours counted 22 tents.
The site was one of several identified by harm reduction groups like Elevate NWO as a place where homeless people were living.
Lester, accompanied by Jeanne Adams who also lives nearby, said they witnessed people urinating and defecating, using the creek as a washing basin, screaming profanities, fighting, partying and starting fires.
On one occasion, Adams said she was terrified after someone rang her doorbell after midnight.
The main concerns from residents, according to Lester, are public safety and the environment. She showed council pictures of debris and dead grass left behind, and suds in the water potentially affecting the trout that spawn there.
Her ask to council was to approve a bylaw prohibiting overnight camping on city-owned trails and parks
"The problem is getting worse – and how many encampments are there going to be next summer?" she asked.
But Holly Gauvin, the executive director of Elevate NWO, says framing the issue in this way ignores the more pressing problem: people are living in tents because there isn't enough affordable housing for them.
A recent decision from the Ontario Superior Court could also affect the city's response. Last month, a judge ruled the Region of Waterloo cannot evict people from one of its homeless encampments if there aren't enough emergency shelter beds available.
Now, Thunder Bay councillors are seeking legal advice on what its response to encampments can be. City staff are to report back in April, providing an overview and analysis of the Waterloo ruling and what Thunder Bay's options might be.
It would be a shame to see this regression back to vilifying the homeless and pushing them from park to park- Holly Gauvin, Elevate NWO
Coun. Rajni Agarwal suggested what she called adjustment by design: if the city planted a pollinator garden with "thorny bushes," that would beautify the trail while deterring people from camping there.
But the idea was quickly shot down, with Cory Halvorsen, the city's manager of parks and open spaces, saying that wouldn't be the first approach he'd take. Rather, the priority has been supporting aid efforts for those in the encampments.
As Cynthia Olsen, the city's manager of community strategies and its drug strategy co-ordinator, pointed out, many of the city's other encampment areas are naturalized and people stay there anyway.
Olsen has worked closely with groups like Elevate NWO to support to people living in the encampments. Since October 2021, more than 100 individuals have been housed, she said.
Meanwhile, some suggested the tents are overly expensive, with Mayor Ken Boshcoff saying some of the larger tents were "kind of fancy," and included windows and awnings.
Olsen said she couldn't comment on the price of the tents but said in many cases, multiple people and even their pets stay inside them.
Gauvin told CBC News community members donated many of the tents distributed this summer.
"I can assure people that we haven't been going out and buying luxury tents for anybody," she said.
She also opposed the concept of pushing people out of places by planting thorny bushes.
"I don't support anything that seeks to exclude community members based on socioeconomic conditions," she said.
'We have some competing priorities here'
Gauvin said her initial reaction to council's conversation was disappointment.
"I feel like that's a really problematic position, that the response is let's get legal coverage to make sure that we can kick people out if that's the way we want to go," she said. "It is not the type of community that we want to see."
Instead, she's hoping the report to council in April includes fulsome consultations with the agencies helping the city's homeless along with Indigenous leadership.
An important piece left out of the conversation, she said, is how Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by homelessness in Thunder Bay.
"This is a racialized issue," she said.
For Olsen, a collaborative approach has been key to the successes so far. When community agencies work together and meet people where they're at, individuals are less likely to get lost in the system's shuffle, she said.
Besides giving people supplies, community groups have been helping people in encampments fill out housing applications, organize clean-ups, and determine other resources to best meet their needs, she said. A key element has been employing peer workers with lived experience who can form meaningful relationships with those in precarious situations.
In the last two years, Gauvin said she's felt an "unprecedented" level of support from the city in helping get people into housing. That's something she said the community can't afford to lose, especially as needs are rising rapidly and housing stock is in low supply.
"It would be a shame to see this regression back to vilifying the homeless and pushing them from park to park," Gauvin said.
While she acknowledged the safety concerns expressed by those living near the encampments, she reminds people of the attacks and persecution facing the people inside them.
For example, Gauvin said a man living in a tent recently suffered a stroke and had a rock thrown inside, "and didn't have the safety of a door between him and the outside world."
"We have some competing priorities here, but I don't believe…that it has to be all one way," Gauvin said.
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