Tent city attracted homeless from out of town, councillors say
Consultant says homelessness could be ended by 2025 if there’s the political will
Peterborough can end homelessness by 2025, said a consultant who studied the city’s housing issues, but council must have “the political will” to put chronically homeless people on the top of waitlists for social housing.
Tracy Flaherty-Willmott, an Ottawabased consultant, said it during a presentation to the city-county joint services committee on Thursday.
But two city councillors, Coun. Dean Pappas and Coun. Andrew Beamer, said at the same meeting that tent city attracted homeless people to Peterborough this summer from areas such as Oshawa — and that’s a problem.
“We’re a catchment area ... We do catch a lot of homeless from outlying regions,” Pappas said.
Flaherty-Willmott works for Org-Code Consulting Inc., which was hired a year ago by the city to examine local homelessness and recommend solutions.
Her report was completed in spring, before the homeless encampments in Victoria Park and at St. John’s Anglican
Church came to be set up.
The so-called tent city was established after the Warming Room shelter closed on July 1. The largest encampment, at county-owned Victoria Park, was dismantled Aug. 27 after homeless campers were told they’d be evicted.
On Thursday, Flaherty-Willmott summarized her findings for the joint services committee, which is made up of elected officials who oversee shared services between the city and county, such as social services.
The meeting was chaired by Peterborough County Warden J. Murray Jones; Mayor Diane Therrien was absent.
Flaherty-Willmott recommended homeless people be prioritized for social housing rather than the current system of putting all applicants on a wait-list and meting out housing on a first-come, first-served basis.
Emergency personnel such as paramedics are often called to care for homeless people, Flaherty-Willmott pointed out, and that comes at a cost to municipalities.
“You have the power to make that stop,” she said to the committee.
But Pappas said Peterborough attracts homeless people from “outlying regions” such as Bancroft, for example.
Flaherty-Willmott called that “the Greyhound solution to homelessness,” and said it doesn’t work. But sometimes “repatriation” does work, she added — that’s when intake workers ask homeless people at the shelter doors where they slept the previous night and then ask whether it’s safe and appropriate to return there.
Beamer also called Peterborough “a catchment area” for homeless people from areas such as Kingston and Oshawa.
“We saw that with tent city,” he said.