Eviction Day
Residents at 100 Victoria N have been told to leave the encampment by 9am today
Well, today is the day that the Region decided that residents at the Victoria and Weber encampment must leave by. Of course, recently, the Region has said that “there are no plans to have bylaw or police on the site” today. While I’m not entirely sure what today holds, I wanted to capture some of how we got to this point.
While many municipalities have evicted people living in tent encampments, encampment evictions made local news when the Region of Waterloo used heavy equipment to remove a small encampment last November. Within a week of that eviction, there was a protest held where those tents once stood. Advocates “protested the region's decision to clear the space that provided shelter to several people. They also called for more support to tackle homelessness.” Kitchener Centre MPP Laura Mae Lindo attended that protest and stated, "People are starting to see the depth of the problem that the notion of an encampment as the last resort is being criminalized in a way that puts the burden of poverty on the shoulders of the most marginalized."
The Region responded by developing a new policy for making decisions around housing encampments, with the stated goal of treating people with more respect. According to the policy, “eviction will be a last resort, and it will require more regional officials to be involved in making decisions around people living rough on regional land.” While there were calls for a moratorium on encampment evictions, Regional Chair Karen Redman said, "To say that there's going to be a blanket moratorium, I don't know that that's in the best interest of the community, of the people living in encampments, and the people that are concerned that there are services available that are being funded by tax dollars."
And we know that the Region has heard from some nearby neighbours and business owners stating their displeasure about the existence of the encampment. In response to one business owner’s concerns, Chris McEvoy, the manager of housing policy and homelessness prevention with the Region said, “Outreach teams and many partners are in close contact with the people in the encampment and with the local businesses. We are taking short-term actions to clean up the area and adjoining business plazas including the pick-up of garbage, removal of graffiti, etc.”
In the same article, Ruth Cameron, with ACCKWA, stated that “there's a widening inequality gap and a commitment to investing in more affordable housing stock is important, as well as affordable rentals, enough rent supplements, and investing in not-for-profit housing that stays not-for-profit housing.
Another possible approach is to sanction encampments and Ruth Cameron and “many other local advocates have been calling for temporary but immediate solutions such as the creation of a sanctioned encampment site that is serviced to mitigate health and safety concerns.”
"I don't want anyone to have to live in an encampment. But if it's not safe to be in a congregate setting because COVID still exists and people would like to have a little bit of freedom and autonomy [that] they can have being in a tent with their possessions, apart from other people, then let's find a way to do that using harm reduction principles and make it as safe as possible while the region is working on affordable housing," Cameron said.
While sanctioning encampments seems to be off the table for now, the Region did (eventually) respond to calls for washroom access for the residents at 100 Victoria N. Through a partnership with the Working Centre, the washrooms at St. John’s Kitchen (across the street from 100 Victoria N) would now be open 24/7. Council also approved the hiring of two security guards to staff the washrooms during overnight hours, at an anticipated cost of $34,000/month. Councillor Galloway did ask staff if outreach workers with mental health expertise could be hired instead, but that never came to fruition.
CBC’s Craig Norris spoke with Regional Councillor Elizabeth Clarke at the end of May about the encampment. Councillor Clarke says that the main concern with the encampment is the large increase in the number of people there and with that, an increase in “critical health and safety concerns”. Clarke also refers to the Region’s newly adopted risk assessment tool. While I don’t believe that tool has been made public, you can read a short thread about what information is available on it in the staff report.
In early June, we learned that people would have to leave the Weber and Victoria encampment by 9am on June 30th. Of course, where they are supposed to move to remains unanswered. When Regional Chair Redman was asked about this, she said that she’s unsure, but “we're continuing to outreach to the individuals and I don't know exactly what will happen on that day."
Thankfully, there have been many people taking action to support the residents at 100 Victoria N, including the creation of a petition calling for: A stop to all actions to evict encampments; To allow encampments; To provide immediate support to alleviate the harms of homelessness; and To work with encampment residents, frontline workers, and supportive communities to create short and long-term solutions. Various community groups have signed onto the petition, including Ground Up WR, Climate Justice Laurier, SPECTRUM, and the Community Fridge KW. At the time of writing, the petition had over 800 signatures.
There was also a rally to say no to encampment evictions and yes to housing held on June 22nd, starting at Speakers Corner in Kitchener where “hundreds of supporters marched holding signs and chanting up Weber Street heading past the encampment location back down to the corner of King and Benton.” I had the opportunity to speak at the rally and you can read my message at the end of this post, if interested.
Of course, in all of this, the voices of the residents are too often excluded. However, Mike Farwell interviewed one resident of the encampment, Andrew, earlier this month. And Paige Desmond spoke to another resident, Eddy, who “despises the shelter system calling it “hell on earth.” However, Eddy has some ideas about what’s needed. “What the community needs, says Eddy, is shelters that have dedicated mental health professionals, proper storage on-site, and supervised drug use. As well, the outreach teams who already have relationships with people experiencing homelessness need to be sustainably funded; people dealing with substance use need legalized drugs with strict regulation, and a safe supply to reduce harm and prevent overdose deaths.” And, he also says that police and surveillance are not the answer. “No more security,” he said, adding that the system sets people up to fail.”
As I mentioned, the Region has said that there will be no Regional staff, by-law, or police officers at Victoria and Weber today, however, they may look into legal options if not everyone leaves. "We expect individuals to comply with the notice to vacate the site on June 30 and we are committed to ensuring the site is vacated in a safe manner." reads a statement from the Region. "If individuals do not comply with the notice to vacate, the Region may need to seek direction from the courts on next steps."
While I appreciate that the Region seems to have learned its lesson about heavy-handed (and heavy-equipment) evictions, things feel rather uncertain now. What will the next steps look like and how will we provide autonomy to these residents throughout the process? At this point, there still seem to be more questions than answers. However, until we can answer the question of ‘Where will they go?”, we simply can’t accept encampment evictions as a solution.
Paige Desmond with the Record has done a terrific job covering this whole process. She laid out some of that coverage in this recent Record article.
Another great resource to stay up to date on this and many other housing and homelessness issues, is Regan Sunshine Brusse’s website, My Mother Named Me Sunshine.
Rally message:
Thank you for showing up today to support our neighbours. My name is Melissa Bowman and I’m a co-founder of Waterloo Region Yes In My Backyard or WR YIMBY. We are a grassroots community group that urges the cities of Waterloo Region to adjust their zoning to allow for more housing, especially affordable housing and to adequately fund affordable housing. I’m also with Reallocate WR which are advocating for, among other things, a community-led homelessness and housing affordability strategy.
Approximately 8 months ago many of us were angered to see the Region bulldoze an encampment at Stirling and Charles. Of course, the use of heavy equipment caught the attention of many, including the local media. And while the bulldozer was clearly problematic, the bigger issue was that the region seemed to say that it’s okay to force people out while not providing any acceptable housing alternatives.
And now, we’re here today because we know that, while the Region perhaps learned a lesson about not using heavy machinery to tear down encampments, it’s still using a heavy-handed approach that demands people move from one site to…where, exactly? That is the key question. Where are we expecting these residents to move to? We have heard that some residents have been offered emergency shelter. While this may work for some and I’m glad our community has shelters as one option, we know that there are many reasons why emergency shelters simply won’t work for some people. Add to that, that we simply don’t have enough spaces in our emergency shelters for everyone, and it’s clear that they are not going to be the solution. Until we as a community have a good answer to where these residents will go, we simply can’t accept eviction as an option.
I see some signs and banners here today and I have a couple as well. Unfortunately, some of these are the very same signs used at our housing rally in response to the Region’s eviction on Stirling just months ago. And here we are again with the same message - that encampment evictions are not acceptable. My hope is that we see the Region take bold actions starting today in support of unhoused residents and that we don’t need to keep dragging these signs out to future rallies.
The Region tells us they are investing in a Housing First approach. This approach means housing people permanently without forcing them to jump through hoops to prove they are ‘ready’ for housing. But Housing First as an overall strategy requires housing to be available for all. So how can we say we have a Housing First model when we simply don’t have enough housing to offer everyone? When we have waitlists for a non-senior one bedroom home of nearly 8 years on average. And removing residents from encampments does nothing to solve these problems and only causes additional harm.
One of WR YIMBY’s core beliefs is that “People have a variety of housing needs so we must offer diverse housing options to meet those needs.” And while that means we need to ensure we are building more townhomes, duplexes, apartments, and more, it also means that we need to offer housing and supports for people who are not yet housed. People who find safety and community in an encampment like at Victoria and Weber, and consider it more of a home than a temporary space in emergency shelters.
On our WR YIMBY website, we outline two questions that must be asked when housing options are opposed, and today I pose those questions to the region. And those are:
Where else are people supposed to go? And, if allowing people here (at the encampment) is bad, why is it better to force people elsewhere? I don’t believe we have answers to those questions and that’s why we’re adding our voices to say no to encampment evictions and yes to housing.
If we allow encampments, we’re not saying “this is the ideal” but we are allowing residents a measure of autonomy, an important first step towards being housed on terms that work for them, which is a more compassionate way to house people in need.
I’ll let others more knowledgeable than me speak to this issue, but in all of these conversations (or statements actually) about who is allowed to do what on ‘region-owned’ lands, we must reflect on what reconciliation looks like in this process too.
If we want to be a ‘world class community’ then it’s time to invest deeply in people, in prevention, and in caring, compassionate models of support.