Saint John considering 5 locations for housing encampment 'green zones'

The City of Saint John has narrowed down the sites it's considering for homeless encampment "green zones" to five publicly owned locations in the city, Cara Coes, community support services manager, told council Monday night.

She said city staff, along with the province's Department of Social Development, investigated 11 sites for the green zones — which will be designated areas for homeless encampments — and assessed them on criteria such as access to city services, public transportation and sidewalk access.

"We identified that some sites are not directly on bus routes, no sidewalks are available, soil contamination in some sites, and water, wastewater and electricity may not be easily accessible as well," Coes said. 

The city has not disclosed where the five sites still under consideration are located.

The city launched its Housing for All strategy in July. It includes plans to create green zones as well as yellow zones, where encampments may be allowed at certain times of the year, and red zones, where no encampments will be permitted.

"These findings helped us narrow down a little bit more to look deeper into the sites previously mentioned," Coes said. "Our next steps are to build out site requirements with the Department of Social Development."

The strategy is composed of 28 action items. Creating the green, red and yellow zones are one of the earliest priorities. 

City staff have previously said that a number of services, such as frontline staff, electricity, heat, garbage pickup and temporary "structures" like residential units with beds, bathrooms and small kitchenettes, would be considered for green zones. 

Coes said the city plans to hold "community engagement" on the sites and aims to implement the zones in the final quarter of this year.

Municipalities bearing the burden, councillor says 

Coun. David Hickey, who pushed for the strategy's approval, praised city staff for recognizing the urgent needs related to the city's homeless crisis. 

He said that the growth of encampments is becoming "overwhelming" for the municipality to manage. 

"I hope this continues to be a message to other levels of government to step up, because municipalities are bearing the burden of the responsibility of this," he said.

"We have limited tools and limited ability to be able to deal with it. We do not own housing. But we have had to step up, rise to the occasion, recognizing that we need to do something and we are. We're doing our best to do it with urgency, with the resources we have."

Mayor Donna Reardon said she was also pleased with the timelines in the update and echoed Hickey's comments.

"It's something we're not resourced for," Reardon said.

"We don't have the cash, don't have the people, But we're doing what we can because it's our citizens that are involved in it. So we do appreciate all the effort you and your team are putting into it … and appreciate the update tonight. It's really important, I think, for us and for the public to get that."