Cat litter and curtains? Stop dropping off random items at encampment, group says
Non-profit in Lower Sackville, N.S., urging people to check first before donating
A non-profit group at a Halifax-area tent encampment says the site is being overwhelmed with donations of items that aren't useful, forcing volunteers to sift through it all and get rid of much of it.
Samantha Ashton, the vice-president of the Gated Community Association, which is helping people living at the Cobequid Road ballfield in Lower Sackville, said there's no dry place to store donated items, which become dirty, wet and ruined.
She encouraged people who want to donate to check the group's Facebook group to see what might be needed.
Ashton spoke with Erin MacInnis with CBC's Information Morning Halifax. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
We've seen at other encampments people talking about folks dropping off sort of random household stuff, almost like they're maybe trying to clean out their basement a little bit. What kind of stuff are you getting that aren't necessarily on your needs list?
One day we opened up a bag of used cat litter. It's, you know, decorative curtains or table runners or, you know, things that aren't terribly helpful in those situations.
Really it comes down to somebody has to sort the items. Somebody has to then package them up and bring them to other places, so it's a lot of extra on our volunteers to do that.
Our residents don't have a vehicle, so they're kind of like, "Well, what are we supposed to do with it?" so it just kind of gets left in a bag.
We might get, like, one bag of men's clothing or two bags of men's clothing, which is easily picked through and absorbed back in, and the residents can use it.
And then we have, like, 18 bags of women's clothing. And we actually have less women at the encampment than we do men. They might get a few items from those things, but then the rest of it has to go.
Are you encountering people as they're dropping stuff off? What are they saying, I guess, as they're leaving the stuff?
If we're there on site and we see them, we often will just ask them. I mean it's quite awkward when we have to do that, we actually have to say, "Oh, we don't have any room for stuff."
And so we often divert them over to Beacon House, or the warming shelter, or other encampments, or Value Village or where have you. And we try to divvy that up at times. I know even those places have become overwhelmed with donations being dropped off, and I think they run into a lot of the same types of things, except for they have a … dry facility to hold them.
Unfortunately, we kind of get put in a bit of an awkward situation in which we have to actually tell the person, like, please don't bring the item in. Sometimes people get quite upset and offended by that, which is a little bit awkward because they really wanted the residents to have those items.
But I don't think they're quite understanding the magnitude of things that get dropped off at times.
Particularly going into storms, for whatever reason, the day before storms, we'll be … tying down tarps and things like that. We'll have people come one after another, carloads full of stuff to drop off, which is the absolute worst possible time to bring things.
The residents won't say no because they don't want to sound like they're unappreciative. But the residents also get a lot of flack from the community, and the city, and the compliance and things like that, just because the place does become very messy.
What's the reality of your storage situation there right now? How are you storing things and keeping them dry?
We have a dugout that has bins in it. There's not a lot of storage. We try to keep that to, you know, a few extra tents in case something happens in an emergency. We keep some extra bedding and pillows and things like that.
There is some clothes in there that we do have for them, but even that has become overflowed from that. And now like the carport's filled with a bunch of stuff, and it really comes down to volunteers having to then go through, sort it and get rid of it.
I don't want to discourage people from being generous and giving back to the community. I think it's wonderful. I think it's amazing that people are doing that, but encampments really aren't well set up to hold that type of stuff.
With files from CBC Radio's Information Morning Halifax
