City and police converge on encampment in downtown park
When Willard Clark returned to the downtown Hamilton park where he’d pitched his tent, he found it in the back of a city truck.
“It don’t make me feel good,” Clark said Friday afternoon as police and city staff dismantled an encampment at John-Rebecca Park.
The 63-year-old homeless man had just visited the Wesley Day Centre, a medical and social-service hub on Ferguson Avenue North, when he saw the commotion.
This is not how it’s supposed to happen, say those who brokered a deal with the city about how to handle encampments.
People with tents at the park at John Street North and Rebecca Street were only given a few hours of notice — and some who weren’t there didn’t know at all, Dr. Jill Wiwcharuk said.
“It’s totally inappropriate. It’s inhumane and it’s not in the spirit of the agreement we came to with the city,” said Wiwcharuk, who’s with the Hamilton Social Medicine Response
Team.
But Coun. Jason Farr, who represents downtown, said it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to people at the park.
“They’ ve been told, but they’re not interested in, I guess, adhering to the advice of police or bylaw or both.”
On Friday afternoon, roughly 10 tents were at John-Rebecca Park, which is across from Hamilton Urban Core Community Health Centre, home to a supervised injection site.
In early October, Hamsmart, Keeping Six, the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic and Ross & McBride LLP, reached a deal with the city to lift an injunction in place since late July that prevented the municipality from moving people from tents against their will.
The agreement centres on a protocol involving how outreach efforts, including directing people to shelters or hotels, should apply to people depending on their “acuity.”
For most, it means a 14-day maximum from initial contact that people can stay in tents. For people with the highest
acuity, those with severe issues with mental health and addiction, for instance, there is no limit. But roads, sidewalks and boulevards, and heritage sites are off limits for anyone pitching a tent, which can’t exceed groups of five in one spot. Sites that are within 50 metres of a playground aren’t allowed.
On Friday, Hamsmart and Keeping Six disputed that John-Rebecca Park had a playground. There are “play knolls.”
A city spokesperson said via email “it may not be obvious that it is a play location,” but the park “was designed as an innovative play structure and it also contains a splash pad. It is by design, a play area.”
Last week, with the injunction lifted and protocol in place, the city started enforcing its bylaws at encampments on Ferguson Avenue North outside the day centre and outside FirstOntario Place on York Boulevard.
Clark said he’d spent months at the Ferguson encampment, which numbered roughly 60 tents just before it was cleared.
With Wiwcharuk’s intervention, he managed to salvage his tent and belongings from the city truck.
In the end, he and some others were allowed to stay at the park for now.
Sgt. Peter Wiesner, who leads Hamilton police’s crisis teams, said the goal was to take a “compassionate and empathetic approach” to marginalized encampment residents. “We have to be part of the solution.”
Farr, who notes he has fielded numerous complaints from constituents about encampments, said the city was soon to move on to other “obscene” numbers of tents in other parks.
“All we’re doing today and tomorrow and the next day ... is exercising our commitment to sensitively be at the numbers in the locations that the both parties agreed to.”