‘THE OUTCOME IS TRAGIC’
Draft notes planned building would fit in on Montreal Road and improve services
Planners on board with proposed Sally Ann move
The Salvation Army’s Booth Centre in the ByWard Market should be allowed to move to a new campus on Montreal Road, the city’s planning department is ready to tell city councillors when they vote on the idea in mid-November.
An incomplete draft of a report to council’s planning committee explains that although the huge majority of people city hall has heard from about the charity’s controversial plan are against it, the total number of homeless shelters in the Rideau-Vanier ward wouldn’t increase with the move, so it’s OK.
The Salvation Army wants to move from the converted school in the Market it has used as a homeless shelter and social-service site for decades, into a bigger and designed-from-scratch facility on land that now features a motel with a big parking lot. Most of the uses it plans for the property are allowed under the zoning for the site — except for the shelter part, which is why the charity is seeking city council’s approval.
The Salvation Army says a purpose-built complex will be much better able to help people who need its services and will be neatly integrated into the neighbourhood in a way its Booth Centre never could be. The planning department agrees.
Final reports, with their recommendations and explanations, ordinarily get released to the public a week before a vote. The document is dated Oct. 16, well in advance of the committee meeting scheduled for Nov. 14, and has placeholder text in some sections. It’s obviously not finished. But the thrust is clear.
“The proposed development is a relocation of an existing facility from an area with a high concentration of shelters, to a site that will contain accessible supports, and is not a net increase in the number of shelters,” reads the draft report’s conclusion.
That rationale, expressed just that simply, is repeated in several places.
“The outcome is tragic,” said Coun. Mathieu Fleury, who represents Rideau-Vanier. His ward includes both the ByWard Market, where the Salvation Army is now, and its Montreal Road destination. He is opposed to the move.
The city has a big official landuse plan and a specific plan for Vanier, which have come from massive consultations and city council votes.
“All of these plans basically mean nothing when they can just be amended, site-specific, at any time. That’s what I find tragic in this case. Communities want certainty, The planning department and planning committee have talked a lot about how that’s what we want to give them,” Fleury said.
The document laments that the city doesn’t have specific rules in its official land-use plan for whether and how a shelter can be built on a “traditional mainstreet” like Montreal Road.
Homeless shelters aren’t on the list of things you can build on such a street, but nor are they explicitly forbidden. They’re not mentioned either way.
In 2008, amid worries that shelters and other social services were taking over King Edward Avenue (the Shepherds of Good Hope shelter is on King Edward; the Salvation Army’s Booth Centre is just over a block west of it), the city’s planning department looked at the ByWard Market and Lowertown and concluded they were OK but shouldn’t have more shelters added to them. That’s where it stopped.
“Zoning and policy tools are often reviewed and revised when triggered by site-specific development applications,” the draft report says, diving into planning jargon. “As there was no specific application at the time, there was no desire to revisit the historic silence to mainstreets in the Generally Permitted Uses policies of the Official Plan.”
The planners didn’t plan for an application that might come later, such as the one they’re dealing with now.
“It seems like (the) planning (department) felt that a prohibition was in place because the use wasn’t permitted. But when it’s not permitted, it can still be brought forward. And that’s what we’re seeing here,” Fleury said.
When the city looked at the King Edward Avenue situation, it concluded that separating shelters by at least 500 metres was a good idea. Although they’re smaller than the wellknown shelters like the Shepherds, the Salvation Army and the Mission in Sandy Hill, Fleury said Vanier has multiple halfway houses, shelters for women fleeing abuse and other transitional-type housing near the Salvation Army’s planned location.
The city report doesn’t count those as shelters, which Fleury believes is a critical weakness.
The city has a housingand-homelessness plan that emphasizes getting people out of emergency shelters and into apartments — with help and supports, to make sure they can handle what they’re getting, but above all away from warehouses.
“That would decentralize the service points,” Fleury said.
Eventually, the thinking was that one of the larger downtown shelters could just close.
“Now we find ourselves with an unsuccessful housing-andhomeless plan — it didn’t achieve the goals that we’re initially out to get — and a situation where there’s a relocation of existing service points,” he said.
He’s also bothered by what he says are inaccurate numbers in the unfinished report about the number of comments and other forms of input the city has received. Most basically, a petition against the Salvation Army’s plans has more than 3,000 signatures on it, not the 800 the report claims — though he acknowledges that could be just because it’s not complete.
Apart from contemplating the number of shelters in eastcentral Ottawa, the planning department concludes that the Salvation Army’s proposed complex is nicely designed — much better than the motel it’s replacing — and that it will fit in with Montreal Road’s mix of commercial and residential uses without getting in the way.