Shelters aren’t ideal, but progress is being made

Two legal questions are at the heart of the issue of homeless people being forced out of tent camps on public property.

A lawyer with United Nations experience who criticized Peterborough city officials this week for shutting down Peterborough’s most famous, or infamous, downtown encampment highlighted those dual questions.

Homeless people “are saying the shelter system is broken, there is not enough beds and (italics added) that is not where they want to live,” said Leilani Farha, a UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

Those are separate issues: First, whether there are enough shelter spaces for all the homeless people who need them. Second, whether the people who need them want to, and are willing to, live in the spaces provided.

Two British Columbia court decisions identified those issues as key to whether homeless people have a right to set up tent cities.

Those cases involved challenges to city bylaws prohibiting overnight camping on public land, similar to the one Peterborough city and county councils adopted last year in response to the tent cities set up for most of the summer of 2019.

The main take-away from those decisions is that people have the right to camp in a city park overnight, but not permanently, if there aren’t “adequate, secure” shelter spaces for everybody who needs one.

Peterborough missed the adequate requirement last summer when it opened an emergency replacement shelter in the downtown library basement — a windowless box with rows of temporary cots for beds.

Sleeping outdoors was much more attractive, as it would be to almost anyone.

The city did a better job when the COVID-19 crisis hit. Emergency shelter spaces with necessary safety features and distancing and more amenities were set up at the Wellness Centre.

Not everyone who needed shelter space agreed that was adequate. There has always been, and always will be, an issue around low-barrier shelters. In this case, “barrier” primarily defines the degree to which consumption of alcohol and drugs is allowed.

Consumption is not the only barrier concern, but it ties in with others like safety and noise.

Peterborough had a low-barrier shelter run by an organization that has since rebranded itself as One City Peterborough. The city ended its contract with One City, which has continued to provide shelter for the hard-to-house in other ways.

The city has a deal with Brock Mission to help fund operating costs for a new $7-million permanent men’s shelter under construction and will pay the organization to run a separate emergency shelter in a former city building on Wolfe Street for the next two years.

Some housing advocates don’t like the Brock Mission connection, a concern that goes back years to when it was a self-funded shelter with deep Christian ties and a decidedly low-barrier approach.

However, to qualify for city and provincial funding Brock had to become less rigid. Not everyone accepts the rules it imposes, but some rules are necessary.

The question of the moment is what the Wolfe Street shelter will look like. The city is adding showers but not much else. It will be secure, but will it be adequate?

The definition of “adequate” is a work in progress, just like the shelter system.

There will always be criticism, but progress is being made.