Homeless encampment cleared from school property
City says outreach teams worked to ensure homeless residents were offered somewhere safe to go — in shelters or hotels — before the tent city at the former Sir John A. Macdonald school came down
Police and the city cleared a large homeless encampment overnight at the former Sir John A. Macdonald school — but not before offering a safer place to ride out the COVID-19 crisis.
City housing director Edward John said outreach workers spent a couple of weeks “building relationships” with encampment residents before the tent community came down Monday. He said most encampment dwellers — around 10 — agreed to try out shelter beds or citybooked hotel rooms on offer. Others, especially those with dogs, left on their own. No one was arrested and there was no “conflict,” John said.
“One or two people chose to make their own way ... outside of that it was relatively successful,” said John on Tuesday, as cleaners removed tarps and piled trash into bins at the downtown former school.
Street outreach groups like Keeping Six asked the city last week to leave encampments alone during the pandemic.
Co-ordinator Lisa Nussey said that remains the group’s recommendation — although she gave kudos to city out
reach teams “who worked really, really hard” to try to arrange new, safe living arrangements for people.
Nussey nonetheless said she has been in touch with some school-site dwellers who simply moved their tents and tarps elsewhere. “It’s important to remember: people don’t just evaporate when someone decides they need to move. They need a place to exist, to go to the bathroom.”
The public school board asked for the tents to go over concerns about site safety and break-ins, said spokesperson Shawn McKillop. But he said the board adopted a go-slow approach after consulting with the city and groups like Keeping Six.
“We had to think about the safety of the individuals (living on-site) as well as our responsibility to maintain a safe and secure property,” he said. More homeless encampments have popped up recently across the city — sites in the downtown, but also in the North End and along the rail trail in the east end, were visible over the weekend.
Police also responded to requests from the owner of Philpott Church to remove tentdwellers from the building steps after reports of people breaking windows and urinating on property, said spokesperson Jackie Penman.
John said the city encampment “task force” is reaching out to connect with other residents sleeping rough across Hamilton — but there is no plan to seek out and shut down other tent communities.
“It’s not about removing encampments for the sake of removing them,” he said,” adding forcing homeless residents to move around repeatedly “is the last thing we want to do” during the pandemic. “We don’t want to move people unless we can connect them to the right services.”
John said the prevalence of encampments is partly due to seasonal changes — tent living is more common as the weather warms up — but also due to “understandable” wariness about historically cramped shelters.
Rick Dickson, for example, told The Spectator last week he has been sleeping rough more often during the pandemic.
The 49-year-old cancer survivor, who has been off-and-on homeless for two decades, said he tried out the FirstOntario Centre emergency shelter for a night, but remains worried about living in close quarters with others given his susceptibility to pneumonia. “I’d rather be outside, make my own space,” he said.
John said outreach workers are seeking to “reassure” people living on the streets about new safety measures designed to protect them during the COVID-19 crisis, including cutting the number of beds in shelters and introducing symptom screening — and COVID-19 tests if needed — for people entering those buildings.
That screening helped divert a sick homeless resident away from a city shelter in recent days, John said. The individual was taken to a “self-isolation” hotel room instead and tested for COVID-19.
When the infection was confirmed — just the second confirmed COVID-19 case in the homeless population in Hamilton — the individual was offered space at the Bennetto Community Centre, which is being used to house homeless people who need a place to recover from the disease.
The new “surge” shelter at the FirstOntario Centre briefly maxed out its capacity at 50 residents last week, but John said there is still “flexibility” in the system. That’s partly because the city is also putting up more homeless residents — particularly women and families — in hotel rooms during the pandemic.