With no permanent location in sight, sleeping cabins return to Portsmouth Olympic Harbour

With the change of the seasons comes another change of location for Kingston’s sleeping cabins.

This means disruption for residents like Michael Dennis Tobin, although he says the team at Our Livable Solutions does everything they can to make the transition easy.

“We’re well taken care of,” says Tobin. “We stay in a hotel for a couple of nights.”

Despite that, acting executive director Chrystal Wilson says the moves are getting harder.

With no one place to call home, the community has been moving back and forth between the Centre 70 arena and Portsmouth Olympic Harbour every spring and fall.

“If you imagine moving, and what you have to go through just yourself when you move, we do that times 17,” says Wilson.

Wilson says the constant moving makes it hard for the program to accomplish its goal.

“Our goal is to stabilize people, help them deal with the barriers that were keeping them homeless, and then move them into permanent housing,” she says.

“It’s really disruptive to move every six months.”

Work is continuing to find a permanent location, but Wilson says the stigma around the unhoused is making the search more difficult.

“There’s a lot of stigma in this industry,” says Wilson.

“There’s a lot of stigma around homelessness, and unfortunately, that stigma is preventing us from being able to find a permanent location.”

Wilson invites anyone with concerns about the program to come down to Portsmouth Olympic Harbour and see for themselves the difference the program has made in lives of so many.

“I’m back doing my artwork again,” says Tobin.

“I’ve sold quite a few pictures and stuff, and I’m getting back on my feet slowly but surely.”

And slowly but surely, he’ll pack it all up to move down the road, only to do it again in the spring.