Hamilton council defers vote on banning encampments in parks to next year

Hamilton city council has decided to defer a vote on banning tent encampments from all public parks as the city adds new spaces to its shelters.

At a meeting on Wednesday of the city's general issue committee, council voted to defer a motion "to prohibit overnight camping (tent encampments) in all City of Hamilton parks once a total of 192 additional shelter spaces are available through the previously approved expanded shelter capacity and outdoor shelter site."

Council recently approved 192 new temporary shelter beds and an 80-person temporary outdoor shelter, to be located at Barton and Tiffany streets on land once set aside for a stadium and later film studios that were never constructed.

Shortly after, council voted to ban encampments at parks within a one-kilometre radius of the new beds, once they were completed.

Council was scheduled to vote on a motion that would extend that ban to cover all public parks, but Mayor Andrea Horwath motioned to defer the vote to the first quarter of next year, when a staff report on the issue is expected to come back, to avoid any legal complications.

"It may not be fast enough," Howath told council, as she motioned to defer. "But we have to do things in a way that are protecting the interests of everybody in our city — people who are unhoused, people who are housed."

Last year, the city implemented an encampment protocol that allowed unhoused people to live at least 10 metres away from private property, 50 metres away from park amenities, and 100 metres away from schools, daycares and playgrounds.

Constituents complaining, say some councillors

Coun. Esther Pauls introduced the motion to ban encampments from parks back in August, saying then that she'd heard complaints from a constituent about tents too close to her house.

Coun. Tom Jackson was one of three councillors to vote against the deferral, saying the city would soon be providing enough shelter beds for people living in tents, and his constituents wanted their parks back.

"My community is looking for an end date," Jackson said of the city's encampment protocol. 

"The anger reached a pinnacle the last few months," he said. "It's not going away."

The city received three letters from people in the community ahead of Wednesday's meeting, complaining that tents near their house were making them feel unsafe, and they wanted the city to remove encampments from parks.

The city received several more letters asking councillors to reject Pauls' motion, and heard from nine delegates, some of whom disagreed with a ban, questioned whether the shelter system is working and called on the city to address the root causes of homelessness.

Ending park encampments could pose legal problem

But Deputy Mayor Brad Clark cautioned against rushing the vote in light of potential rights violations. A recent court decision out of Waterloo found municipalities can't evict people from encampments if they cannot provide an adequate amount of emergency shelter space. 

The judge said a lack of shelter spaces means the bylaw infringed upon Canadians' right to life and security, as written in the Charter.

Thirteen Ontario mayors recently wrote to Premier Doug Ford asking him to invoke the notwithstanding clause to allow for the removal of encampments regardless.

"I do not want this council to make any decision that might unintentionally create a problem for us in the courtroom," Clark told council ahead of the vote.

Earlier in the day, council also heard from several delegates arguing that the city needed to offer better living alternatives before voting to end park encampments.

"If we don't have places for them, where are they going to go? Are they just moving to a different place and we're just repeating the circle," delegate Nick de Koning told council Wednesday.

Lawyer Craig Burley pointed to the court decision out of Waterloo, and was one of a few delegates who disputed a figure in Wednesday's motion that said Hamilton's population of "unsheltered people" was now under 300.

The city's own homelessness dashboard counted just over 1,500 people actively homeless in the city as of January. The city said this summer, however, that just over 200 people were living in encampments.

During Wednesday's meeting, city staff told council that "housing and homelessness continues to be a prominent theme" of the city's budget forecast for 2025. Approximately 1.9 percentage points of a forecasted 6.9 per cent residential tax increase for next year is tied to additional investments in housing and homelessness, staff said.

The city will now defer the vote to the first quarter of 2025.