Chatham-Kent to break-up riverside encampment due to construction

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent will be breaking up its largest homeless encampment this month in order to carry out federally-mandated construction work.

Outreach workers are currently seeking to relocate 40 to 50 people who are camped out next to the Thames River in downtown Chatham.

"We have some critical slope stabilization work that has to happen along the river, unfortunately, right at the area of where this encampment is located," said Kim Crew, the municipality's director of housing services.

"It's a project that has to move forward and within the time frame of the funding that we received."

That time frame requires the work to begin this fall, Crew added.

Chatham-Kent has seen a 171 per cent spike in its unhoused population since 2019, when officials identified 84 people without shelter. 

That number had grown to 228 by January of 2025. 

The municipality operates 44 shelter beds.

Courts in Canada have repeatedly ruled that unhoused people have a right to shelter on public land where there are no adequate alternatives. 

Chatham-Kent maintains a trauma-informed approach to working with them and has established a protocol to guide where they can camp, Crew said.

"They can't be within 100 metres of a playground, splash pad, the beach – can't be within 100 metres of an elementary school, can't be within 10 metres of a private property line," she said.

"Then there's also, you know, statements in there about if there's construction work that has to be done and then we can ask people to leave for those kind of reasons." 

The municipality is working with R.O.C.K MIssions to help people find alternative places to camp that fit within those guidelines, Crew added.

The municipality notified the encampment residents on July 2 of the need to vacate the area, she said.

Officials will go back on July 14 to follow up with people who haven't yet relocated. 

"If someone is unwilling to relocate ... we do our best with our outreach partners, with our housing partners, and at the very last case scenario, police will be there to enforce the trespass notice if we need them," Crew said.

'We are in desperate need of supportive housing'

Chatham-Kent municipal council approved a plan in April of 2024 to erect 50 transitional cabins on a piece of land on Park Street.  

The city is confident those will be ready at the end of July, and some people from the encampment might move into the cabins, Crew said.

But, she said, "the reality is, there's some that will not."

"We are in desperate need of supportive housing in our community in Chatham-Kent," she said.

"We don't have any. Our council has been pretty vocal about the need for it."

Until the municipality gets that housing, "there's going to be no solution for some folks," Crew said.

Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff told CBC Windsor Morning that the municipality works very hard to take care of the less fortunate.

"They'll have to move, but we will make sure that we give them equal support wherever they end up from having to move from that spot," he said.