A reality check on homeless camps
Cambridge residents hold community hike in bid to take back nature trails, parks from tent cities
Concerned Cambridge residents are hoping to start a movement to take back recreational spaces by raising awareness about illegal homeless campsites increasingly popping up across the city.
To draw attention to the growing issue of tent cities populating Cambridge parks and private properties, a group of Hespeler residents invited Mayor Doug Craig and local media to tour campsites set up along the popular Mill Run Trail on Friday afternoon.
Hespeler resident Lindsay Reed, who helped organize the tour, explores trails with her family daily and felt obliged to call greater attention to the issue after becoming alarmed by escalating hazards presented by those inhabiting the camps.
Although she grew up in Hespeler, she and her husband, Josh, purchased their first house in Galt. However, the amount of drug debris left her pining to return to Hespeler.
“We moved from Galt because we could not use the trails,” she said. “We hoped to get better use of trails in Hespeler.”
But when they relocated, the couple soon realized how widespread homeless camps had become.
“When we moved here three months ago, we found a homeless camp in our backyard,” she said, recalling her exasperation at the discovery. “This started our journey on reporting these types of things to the city and spreading awareness about it.”
Friday’s hike, starting from the trail’s parking lot at the edge of Sheffield Road, provided a reality check into a homeless community hidden from plain view, under the cover of tree canopies.
A short walk off the main trail led into a smaller site, with a large blue tent set up for sleeping, and an adjacent smaller tent used for holding clothing and other goods. An empty wheelchair sat perched outside the tent, just feet from a now-cold campfire pit. A yellow extension cord crept out from the tent’s opening, winding its way to a generator, set up 15 feet away.
The guided tour led to another, much more complex, illegal camping spot just across Chillago Creek, accessed from the parking lot of the former site of a Len’s Mill store. A 30second walk into the woods reveals a “mindblowing” site, constructed with multiple levels, semi-permanent platform structures, and spaces dug out for storage and bathroom use.
The entire site is littered with garbage, including old clothing, blankets, patio deck umbrellas, coolers and even household wares, still in original packaging. Drug debris can be found across the dirt floor. Some of the residents guiding the tour recognized items recently placed to the curb as garbage.
The site appears to still be lived in, but there’s no one home on this Friday afternoon.
Although so-called tent cities have existed in Cambridge for years, it’s believed camps are rapidly expanding — littering city trails and green spaces with garbage and hazardous drug debris in their wake.
While Reed doesn’t aim to pass judgment on those living in the sites, and has even taken the time to talk to the homeless and offer water, she believes it’s time to start reclaiming parks and trails before more damage is done.
In a recent post to A Clean Cambridge Facebook group, she and her husband encouraged other residents to avoid casting blame and shame, and instead get informed on who to call to ensure the issue doesn’t remain under the radar. She posted a list of authorities responsible for various divisions of public properties.
“Awareness is key, especially in Hespeler,” Reed said. “Just spreading awareness about the issue for everybody’s safety, but also from an environmental standpoint.”
She worries that if the problem of illegal camping continues to expand at this rate, there will be dramatic impacts from which the environment may not recover.
“These are the only trails we have here in Cambridge,” Reed said. “If we don’t do something to protect them from the effects and the impacts of illegal camping, we are going to lose something really special here that people fought to protect a long time ago.”
The Reed family created a new Facebook group, Hespeler Trails Safety and Awareness, to act as a way to serve as caring eyes and ears for Hespeler trails.
Following the tour, the mayor said he’s well aware of the growing issue of illegal camping in Cambridge, and has visited numerous camps in areas around Galt. Camping in public spaces, like designated trails and parks, is illegal, Craig noted, and city employees are required to give transient campers 24 hours’ notice to vacate sites.
The city is hearing and heeding residents’ concerns, the mayor said.
“We have to react on a much bigger basis and, I think what the citizens are saying, on a quicker basis in terms of helping people, moving things along to make it a safer place.”
Craig warned that the problem isn’t going to go away overnight, at least not without the wraparound services to address complex issues.
“This is an overall regional problem,” he said. “We need more affordable housing, we need more outreach workers, we need more health support in terms of mental health. These are the issues, outside of the drugs, that will really help us in terms of getting homeless people out of the fields and off the streets.”
It’s a societal issue that requires everyone to pitch in and help, Craig said.
“It’s not just politicians, it’s not just police or legislators at Queen’s Park,” he said. “It’s all of us, and it’s citizens. We have to stand our ground and come up with solutions to make the community safer for people. People are feeling unsafe and I understand that.”