Concerns about camping in park
Peterborough County owns Victoria Park, has no bylaw against overnight stays like city does
One city councillor says he’s concerned about homeless people camping overnight in Victoria Park lately as Peterborough struggles with an ongoing housing crisis.
“They’re sleeping in there, urinating in there – even making love in there,” Coun. Dan McWilliams said during a police services board meeting on Wednesday.
Victoria Park – which is owned by Peterborough County – is located on Water St. The county courthouse overlooks it.
On Labour Day weekend there were two pup tents set up there, as well as three other people sleeping on
old mattresses under the stars.
Some have no place else to stay. The apartment vacancy rate in Peterborough is stuck at one per cent, and emergency shelters such as the Warming Room have reported record numbers of people this summer.
McWilliams asked police at the meeting whether it’s legal to camp overnight at Victoria Park.
Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson told him that it’s not a crime – but it may contravene municipal bylaws.
Camping isn’t permitted in city parks. However, Peterborough County doesn’t have any formal bylaw to ban camping in its only park in the city, said Sheridan Graham, the director of corporate projects and services for the county, in an interview this week.
Not that the county wants overnight campers, Graham said – especially not since they smoke and urinate in the park, which are both illegal activities.
“We highly encourage people not to camp in the park overnight – it’s unacceptable,” she said.
But she also said the county hasn’t evicted anyone for overnight camping in the park, and noted that local shelters are full.
Graham said county staff have met with city social services staff, as well as staff from One Roof Diner free-meal program and the Warming Room shelter, “to see how we can help.”
Peterborough Police have also helped by doing “walkthroughs,” Graham said
She said she’s only received one complaint about the park lately, about garbage in the park left behind by campers. The county has responded by adding trash cans.
Christian Harvey, director of the Warming Room, said in an interview in late August that the shelter has been “incredibly busy” this summer.
They’ve had about 32 people per night, he said – up from about 21 people in the winter.
“We’ve never had numbers this high,” Harvey said, adding that he’s concerned about how those numbers are likely to increase when it becomes too cold to camp.
Although the county has no formal policy against overnight camping in parks, the city does have a protocol for eviction. Campsites are dismantled by city staff after the person has been asked three times to leave and been given 10 days to do so.
In April, city officials evicted a 73-year-old homeless man who’d been camping in a municipal park along Chemong Rd. and Sunset Blvd., just south of Walmart.