Truro homeless say they're forced to hide from police as town tries to deter tenting

Jerry Curlew thought he had found a safe place to pitch his tent in a patch of woods near the train tracks in Truro, N.S.  — but he had a run-in with police soon after he began sheltering there. 

"When they saw me they come and told me I couldn't stay there," Curlew said. "They just ripped it down and took it."

Curlew said he had "nowhere to turn" without a tent, so he slept in different places around the town until he could get a bed in Truro's only homeless shelter. 

"Thank God for the Haven Centre," he said. "They got all the blankets and the pillows and sleeping bags and tents in there. But they can't keep giving us tents if the police are going to take them away all the time."

The 20-bed shelter is full every night and has a wait-list, according to Dana Calder-Boutilier, the board chair of the Truro Housing Outreach Society that runs the Haven House shelter. 

Calder-Boutilier said the town of nearly 13,000 has around 40 people living on the streets, and many more are at risk of homelessness as the cost of living and housing prices climb.

She said as the crisis worsens, people trying to shelter in tents have been told to move on by police — with no alternative place to stay. She said this is driving people further into the woods. 

"They're coming to the shelter looking for a new tent, new sleeping bags, new whatever, to find a new place to hide."

Calder-Boutilier and other homeless-serving organizations in the town are calling for a designated tenting site, similar to Halifax. But the town says tent encampments can be dangerous, and condoning them is a slippery slope. 

Truro mayor 'not keen' on allowing tents

The town's mayor said there are "two different camps" when it comes to the severity of homelessness in Truro.

"We keep hearing from people that basically there could be up to 40 homeless people. That is directly opposed to the reports we have from our Truro Police Department," said Mayor Bill Mills. "They're on the streets 24/7, seven days a week. And I would suspect that they put it somewhere between 10 and 12 [people]."

Mills said the town has been helping with proposals for affordable housing and will open the local fire hall for people to shelter in during extreme weather, but he's "not keen on the idea" of town-sanctioned tenting locations.

He hopes to avoid them because they are also hard to close once they take root. 

"Because of what we're seeing happening across the the Maritimes with the, if you call them tent cities or whatever. To me, we're just putting people in harm's way by doing that," Mills said in an interview. "And there's a whole lot of issues from sanitation to some kind of supervision and you know, there's drugs involved, there's all kinds of fires."

Instead, the community needs to come together to find solutions, he said. 

"Everybody wants to talk about it and then just lump it on top of the town and let us look after it, and we're not prepared to do that," Mills said. "Working together, yes, we are prepared to do that, but we're not taking this thing on by ourselves."

In a written statement, Truro Police Service Chief Dave McNeil said the force is "not in the practice" of confiscating tents or belongings from people experiencing homelessness. 

However, McNeil said the Truro Police Service has responded to calls from business owners and citizens reporting people trespassing or sleeping on private property.

"In those cases, police have asked people to move at the property owner's request and we will continue to do so under the Protection of Property Act."

A town spokesperson said the number of complaints related to people sleeping outside is not available. 

Mills said some people on town property have also been asked to move, but when asked where they can go, he said he is "not privy to that," and suggested the library. 

Truro housing situation 'worst in 10 years'

Stephen Lumsden has lived in Truro all his life, and has been running the outreach ministry at the Groundswell Church for 10 years. 

"This is the worst I've seen in 10 years here in Truro, but it's a complete denial thing going on now," Lumsden said. "So the more we have, the less they admit we have."

Lumsden said every day, six to ten people come to the doors of the church asking for help. 

"They're actually afraid," he said. "They're afraid of people knowing where they're at because they've got shuffled around so many times and each time they get moved you have to replace everything they've had."

Lumsden also said the total number of homeless people is around 40, and a recent free church dinner for people struggling to pay their bills drew 200 people.

Lumsden and Calder-Boutilier said they hope Truro will move more quickly to create initiatives to support homeless people through the winter and beyond. Curlew agreed.

"They need to come up with a solution right away because if you don't, that problems gonna get bigger, bigger, bigger, to the point you won't be able to stop it," Curlew said.