MAP TRACKS THE HOMELESS

Camps reach far and wide across city

It’s increasingly common for people experiencing homelessness to camp in isolated areas of city suburbs and even beyond municipal limits, according to an outreach worker who offers resources to people living rough.

Maps provided to Postmedia by the city show that between January and October of this year, city crews cleaned up 1,800 camps, with sites being found in all 12 wards.

“The people that we’ve run into that are living further outside are just really trying to find a safer place, in a less visible area,” said Doug Cooke, an outreach worker with Boyle Street Community Services.

A lot of people still stick close to downtown and the river valley — camping in places like Dawson Park, Kinnaird Park and near the Shaw Conference Centre — but the map shows people are setting up refuges as far out as Anthony Henday Drive, and a number of sites have been discovered alongside major traffic arterials that run through Edmonton’s length.

The data provided by the city is representative of the site locations, but not all encompassing because some sites were cleaned up more than once and some locations had more than one campsite.

There’s a range of reasons people are choosing to find more isolated spots to camp, Cooke said.

Some are trying to avoid violence, drug culture and theft within the shelter system, while others want to be able to stay with a partner or spouse, or with their pet. Others simply want personal space.

“It allows people to just have a quiet spot for themselves,” Cooke said, adding that some people are reluctant to speak to him and his colleagues.

But it means those people also don’t have access to transit or services, and can face serious health concerns. Last winter, Cooke said they encountered many people living rough suffering severe frostbite and pneumonia, and if a person has an addiction issue and overdoses, there’s no one around to help.

“It is a deeply disturbing issue,” said Ward 6 Coun. Scott McKeen, who said seeing the maps might shock many Edmontonians.

McKeen’s ward encompasses downtown and surrounding areas where there’s a significant concentration of both shelters and people camping

“We have an opportunity right now with rising awareness to deal with these issues in a really pragmatic way,” said McKeen.

He said tackling homelessness by providing supports to help people address issues of trauma, addiction and mental illness would save lives, and a lot of money in health, social and law enforcement spending.

In the upcoming budget deliberations, city council will debate a plan to build 2,500 affordable housing units over the next four years, with 916 units of permanent supportive housing that would offer the higher level of service that some people would need to stay in housing.

McKeen said the plan is “ambitious,” but, in the meantime, he’s planning to make a motion asking staff to look for immediate solutions to address homelessness, and to bring back data on shelter capacity to better understand if that is a factor in people living rough.

“Whatever we do it has to be supported with folks who can help these people,” said McKeen.

For councillors who represent wards that push to the northern and southern tips of the city, the map reinforces their impression that homelessness is an issue the whole city must grapple with.

Ward 2 Coun. Bev Esslinger said homelessness is a growing challenge in the city’s northwest, and that she’s heard more about it this year than in previous years.

“It really reinforces why it is so important for us not to give up on our strategy for providing all kinds of homes — permanent supportive housing, affordable housing — and why we started to target it throughout the city. Because people throughout the city need it,” Esslinger said.

Fewer camps have been discovered in the southwest and Ward 9 Coun. Tim Cartmell said he’s only occasionally heard from people who thought they might have seen camps in wooded areas, but he thinks the map is informative for people who think homelessness is contained to the inner city.

“Information like this helps people understand that it is a more widespread problem than that, and that it does need attention across the city,” he said.