Council rejects more encampment service depots, extends existing ones until end of February

The future of service depots providing basic necessities to homeless encampments remains uncertain after a council committee decided on Tuesday to keep existing services running until the Feb. 28, with no clear replacement in place.

After a nearly three hour debate, councillors rejected proposed new locations for service depots, but agreed to let them continue past their Dec. 31 funding deadline, while city staff look to develop an alternative outreach model.   

"We want to make sure we get some stability in place as fast as possible so that's the priority," said deputy manager Kevin Dickins, warning the delay can cause more problems later on.

"If it's changed to February, that's giving more runway but it creates different challenges in terms of getting funds into the hands of services to that we can actually support people. While I appreciate the extra time, it solves one problem but probably creates another one."

Councillors voted 10-5 to extend the services, with Shawn Lewis, Peter Cuddy, Paul Van Meerbergen, Steven Hillier and Susan Stevenson in opposition. However, some who supported the extension also expressed dismay at the lack of urgency.  

"This is pushing it back even further, it just doesn't make sense to me," said Coun. David Ferreira, whose ward includes the downtown core. "This is the kind of stuff that makes me lose all the faith that council has what it takes to address this issue. We are not giving this city what it's asking for."

By January, Dickins said, staff will ask the federal government for funding that can fill the gaps in service for the additional two months.

"We hope that based on what we've asked the federal government, we'd be able to retroactively, as per their guidelines, fund whatever service gap there is between the end of December and the report back and operationalize this stuff," he said. 

Service depots provide those in encampments with food, water and harm reduction supplies. The depots, which are intended to be mobile, also offer access to portable bathrooms and allow outreach workers to provide wellness checks and information about other services. 

Earlier this month, council directed staff to come up with a list of service depot locations with buffers of 50 to 100 metres away from residential properties. Staff were also instructed not to concentrate the potential locations in one area.

Staff's proposed locations resulted in pushback from east-end councillors who argued that too many potential depots will be concentrated in their wards and add extra pressure on an already struggling area of the city. Current service depot locations include one in Watson Park located on Thames River between Wellington and Adelaide streets, and a mobile depot in Evergreen Park.

Deputy mayor Lewis said he didn't support the motion because he'd prefer to see money be invested into overnight beds.  

"I appreciate why colleagues think that's something they would like to support, I would rather support putting every dollar we have into overnight beds," he siad. 

Other councillors in favour said they too want to see overnight beds, but extending service depots in lieu of beds being available is essential to preventing people from dying on the streets.

Last week, the federal government gave the City of London $5 million over two years to assist in its response to the crisis of encampments and other homeless relief efforts. It's up to council to decide how this money will be used. 

"The funding that's provided by the federal government is for an encampment plan. I'm supportive of additional service that we can fund through said plan but right now, we don't have anything else on the table," said Coun. Corrine Rahman.

Council will make the final decision at its next meeting on Nov. 26.