Homeless encampments at 'all-time high' in Ottawa
City approach favours support and housing, with dismantling tents 'a last resort'
Norman Quenneville finds tranquillity in a little tuft of trees by Bayview station.
He spent about five months at the Ottawa Mission shelter, but between the theft and the crowds and the downtown drug scene, he felt he needed a place to be alone.
"I had to get away from there to keep my own sanity," said Quenneville.
So he sleeps in a tent under a tree, using a branch as a clothesline. Inside are his books, blanket and peanut butter.
It isn't his first encampment.
He spent a few days under a bridge near St. Laurent Boulevard and Innes Road by an abandoned train track, but "intuition" drew him to this spot on a hill overlooking the Ottawa River.
"There's nobody here to sell you drugs. There's nobody around to give you the thought," he said. "There's nature and some peace of mind."
When CBC met him earlier this month, Quenneville was one of about 260 people the city estimates are sleeping outside in Ottawa.
Kale Brown, the city's manager of homelessness programs and shelters, said there was a "massive rise in encampments during the pandemic."
"This summer in particular, we've really seen a large ramp up," he said. "This is at an all-time high."
Why do people sleep outside?
According to data from Brown's department, city staff have responded to 375 encampments so far this year. That's way up from 343 during all of last year and 248 in 2021. In 2020, the first year with comparable data, there were just 65.
Brown said no one has to sleep outside because there's always space at one of the city's emergency shelters, on an overflow mat or in an arena used as a physical distancing centre.
But there are all sorts of reasons that might push someone to prefer a tent in a forest clearing or near an old train track, Brown said, such as addiction, mental health issues, trauma or just the search for tranquillity and a bit of space to breathe.
"Really it comes down to their personal preference of where they feel safe, what their kind of prior experience is," he said. "A lot of them have past trauma."
Companionship can be another reason, whether with pets or partners.
Brown took CBC to the site of an encampment earlier this year, where a couple was staying under a willow at the shore of Dows Lake. They wouldn't have been able to stay together at the city's emergency shelters for adults.
That encampment was gone, but a new tent had popped up just a few steps down the shoreline.
Housing, not 'whack-a-mole'
Still, encampments aren't legal, according to Brown, and the city has a policy for how to respond to them. He said it's based on outreach, support and the search for long-term housing.
It often starts with Mikyla Tacilauskas and her team at the Salvation Army, where she works as manager of outreach and housing services.
"Instead of sending police or bylaw they send my team, so we go and we offer that social work presence," she said. "Do they need help booking in? Are they sleeping outside because they don't know how to access services?"
If that's the case, she gets them into a shelter. Her workers will even drive them over.
If they choose to keep staying outside, her team keeps coming back about weekly to build trust and work on housing applications.
WATCH | Some of the housing outreach work done in Ottawa:
Quenneville said the Salvation Army outreach workers came to visit him four times at his tent, bringing him food and water and housing options.
"There's housing on Riverside Drive that I applied for, but there's a four- to 10-year waiting list," he said.
Brown said the wait-list for rent-geared-to-income housing is currently at about 12,000 people, though the city does offer subsidies to help pay the cost of private market housing.
It cost an average of $2,058 to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Ottawa in August 2023, according to listings on rentals.ca, which is up from $1,820 in August 2022 and $1,628 in August 2020.
Tacilauskas said it can sometimes take three months to find housing for people living outside, but it can also take years, especially for transient people who keep shifting between encampments.
"If we can't find them, or if we only see them once every three months, that's going to make the process last much longer," she said. "Ihat can be upwards of two to three years."
Despite the challenges, Brown said finding permanent housing is the key to dealing with encampments. Otherwise, it's just a game of "whack-a-mole" as dispersed people move on to set up tents elsewhere in the city.
Brown said outreach efforts got more than 125 people directly out of encampments into a home last year. He called that an "amazing success."
'Dismantle day' a last resort
What if the housing search drags out and tent-dwellers resist moving into a shelter while they wait?
"As a last resort, we will work to remove the encampment," said Brown.
That starts with a posted notice from bylaw services giving a few days to leave. Brown said that usually does the trick, prompting people to voluntarily move along.
If it doesn't, the city can move on to what he called a "dismantle day,"or the physical removal of the encampment.
Brown said police and bylaw services are typically on site, as is the city's social services department, to make sure encampment residents have somewhere else to go.
The NCC might be present if the encampment is on its land. City park crews can pitch in if any garbage is left over.
"It's really focused on supporting them," said Brown. "Happily, we've never had an issue during a dismantle day. We're always able to get them to move along."
Brown said the city prioritizes removals when encampments are growing, or when there are hazards on site such as combustibles.
"If we're going the dismantle route, we don't want them to get too large," he said. "That involves implications for public use of those parks, that kind of thing, so what we do try to do is keep them small."
A recent Ontario court decision found that it was unconstitutional to remove an encampment if there was no available — and accessible — shelter option for people living there.
According to the judge, that meant the shelter option would have to cater to their specific barriers, including drug-use issues or the desire to live with pets or a partner.
Brown said the city got a legal opinion about what the decision means for Ottawa. He said it highlighted the need to make sure his department focuses on providing supports when they remove an encampment.
"We need to give them housing-focused options and then, again, making sure there's adequate shelter space that is suitable for them," he said.
Asked whether it's ethical to move someone along when that can't happen right away, Brown pointed to the need for "balance."
"We also recognize that having access to your community parks, that kind of thing, is extremely important to the community," he said.
"So what we're trying to do in housing services: balance the needs of the community along with the needs of the individuals that are looking for that long-term housing."
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