Homeless fire victims erect tent city near LRT station
Unwilling to use city shelter system, they’re making the best of it outdoors
There’s a dozen or so folks living in a small forest just north of the O-Train’s shiny new Bayview Station.
They were the folks displaced by a rooming-house fire on Lebreton Street North in the spring and another fire last week at a four-unit house on Bronson Avenue.
They’re now living in tents and under tarps that they’re heating with propane now that temperatures are dropping at night.
Some are living in a communal spot, with separate sleeping quarters around a campfire pit. Their homes are fashioned from scraps of anything they could find. Others have built more private shelters off a soggy trail where railway tracks once led to an old rail bridge.
They live beyond the no-trespassing fence, and until they find housing, this is their home. All things considered, some, like Justin, are remarkably upbeat about their lot in life.
After their rooming house on Lebreton Street North was gutted in April, the displaced tenants said they were put up in a hotel for a few days, but now they must fend for themselves, living together in the woods, bundled up and bracing for winter.
“They left everyone high and dry,” said Justin, who is a leader in the tent village on unceded Algonquin territory.
Justin, like the others, doesn’t want to live at downtown shelters because this is their neighbourhood and they have no desire to live in constant worry that what little they own will be stolen. It’s also close to a safe-injection site and health centre, the kind of clinic that welcomes folks who, for various reasons, don’t have health cards or fixed addresses.
They don’t want to leave their neighbourhood, where they feel they have everything they need and, more, good representation on city council. Justin, and another tent villager praised the efforts of Kitchissippi ward Coun. Jeff Leiper and Somerset ward Coun. Catherine McKenney.
They were impressed that the councillors came out to meet them and were left with a firm impression that Leiper and McKenney were doing everything they could to help them find suitable, permanent housing in a city already stretched for affordable and public housing.
“They’re on our side and they get it,” Justin said in the cold rain on Saturday.
They’ve had some visitors in the past month, including police, fire service and City of Ottawa bylaw, but nobody is yet forcing them to leave the tent village.
The folks living in the village say the only two things they need now are propane and firewood. (They have five fire extinguishers at the ready.)
Most of the folks in the forest village have endured more than their fair share of hardship. Some have been in trouble with the law for stealing food, and some are vulnerable addicts. The patch of mud outside one private shelter was littered with needles. There’s a “Warning ” sign in front of the tent. It’s written on plywood in capital letters and says: “STOP. DO NOT ENTER. IF YOU DO, IT’S YOUR OWN DEATH WARRANT ... STAY THE F--- OUT!
Leiper said he understood why they didn’t want to live in a shelter.
“Shelter is not housing. We need to find them housing as quickly as possible,” said Leiper, who is working on the matter with city staff and social service agencies.
The reality is that there is no room at the inn right now, the councillor said.
As a last resort, Leiper and McKenney are trying to get city funding for a warming centre for these people until permanent housing can be found. To that end, they plan to meet with the mayor’s office and city manager.
Leiper said that, to the best of his knowledge, the tent village is on city property.
One of the tent villagers was checking his cellphone under a tarp on Saturday. He was happy to have a shelter over his head while living rough following his unlucky streak of late. He was among those displaced by the rooming-house fire both in April and again last week.
Shelter is not housing. We need to find them housing as quickly as possible.