COVID-19 hits marginalized people hard in 2020
Homelessness, addiction issues made headlines regularly in 2020
Over the past year, many social issues captured headlines in Peterborough, encouraging discussions.
From homeless encampments to tiny homes and affordable housing; from access to water and washrooms during heat waves to calls for a safe consumption and treatment site, social issues stirred strong emotions.
None more so than the issue of encampments and people tenting throughout the city.
A year after “tent cities” popped up in the downtown area, new homeless encampments were dismantled and people were displaced, forced to depend on the city’s shelter system.
People who tented usually had an aversion to the shelters and described them as being invasive, punitive or disrespectful.
Leilani Farha, a Canadian lawyer and United Nations special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, was concerned about people being moved from their encampments.
“It is contrary to international human rights laws to evict people who are living in tents on land, especially when they have nowhere else to go,” she told The Examiner “Shelters are not necessarily somewhere else to go. Because the shelter system is so inhospitable to people living in homelessness, a lot of homeless people don’t want to go to shelters. The rules are prohibitive, the conditions, especially in the middle of a pandemic are prohibitive.”
Tiny homes and their potential for helping with the homelessness and precariously housed were discussed at length this year through a housing task force headed up by city councillors, builders and city employees. The only voice missing was that of the people with lived experience.
“The housing task force we wanted, was to bring together city staff, developers, non-profits, basically folks who have not just an interest, but expertise in building units, to bring people together to see who has land, who has money, who has the ideas, who has the services,” said Mayor Diane Therrien.
In December, city council agreed to a plan to tear down a building the city recently acquired at 681 Monaghan Rd., a building that once housed the now-closed Community Training and Development Corporation and the Learning Circle Daycare. For the short term, the city plans to put up modular homes for 10 low-income families on the property with a longterm plan to build an affordable housing apartment building there.
Housing affordability was another hot topic issue throughout the year with developers and advocates alike stating that what was affordable for some was not affordable for all.
The costs of housing in Peterborough have risen over the past few years, while average incomes have stagnated.
In 2018, Statistics Canada said the average median gross personal income was $34,170, which equates to about $16.42 per hour based on a 40-hour work week, and after income taxes that is roughly $27,585 at a 19.72 per cent tax rate.
A livable wage was calculated to be about $17.63 an hour at the end of 2019. This was based on a household of four people, two parents, two children, and both parents worked full-time jobs.
Water and access to washrooms was an issue in the early months of summer. When temperatures soared, people found it difficult to find adequate hydration or access to bathrooms.
This led to people protesting outside Peterborough Public Health’s downtown office building demanding access to water and the right to dignity when needing to use the bathroom.
“Marginalized people are at a greater risk of dying from heatrelated injuries more than from the cold,” said Dan Hennessey, a local community activist.
Hennessey and a group of activists had pushed for access to water, especially through the pandemic, when access was at its lowest due to downtown businesses closed during the year’s first lockdown.
Safe consumption and treatment sites were a topic during the year that saw a lot of differing opinions about how people with opioid addictions and substance use should have access to treatment.
As the number of deaths steadily climbed throughout the year outpacing 2019, people became concerned for those who might overdose while using or relapse while trying to find help to change their lives.
“The very first avenue of treatment that needs to exist is people need to be alive,” said Alex Bierk, an advocate for safe consumption and treatment sites.
“They need a place they can use safely and not die. You can’t offer treatment, you can’t offer peer support, you can’t access any of these services that exist if you are dead.”
The pandemic impacted how people accessed services, due to the isolation and the physical distancing, these factors played into the increase of overdoses seen this year.
Jessica Penner, co-ordinator of Peterborough Drug Strategy, told The Examiner in July that the way people are treated over their substance use issue comes down to stigma, and that has to change.
“What it really comes down to is stigma,” she said. “I hate to say this, but these are people, these are someone’s babies, its someone’s child, it is someone’s brother, someone’s s i st e r, someone’s father, mother.”
Peterborough’s new Mobile Strategic Outreach Response Team, which will provide resources and harm reduction services to suspected overdose victims, staffed by four parttime Peterborough AIDS Resource Network peer support workers, two Four CAST addiction services case managers and one paramedic, will begin operating Jan. 11 at the new Opioid Response Hub in the former Greyhound bus station at 220 Simcoe St.
An application was submitted to Health Canada and the provincial government to locate a safe consumption and addiction treatment centre at the hub, but there was no word on when the facility might open.