The City of Kingston’s fight to evict unhoused campers from Belle Park continued Tuesday at the Frontenac County courthouse.
The city wants a judge’s permission to dismantle the encampment.
“No matter what the public thinks, it’s actually not all that bad of a place,” says Jay English, an encampment resident.
English has lived in the Belle Park encampment for 20 months now.
This week, as colder weather arrives, lawyers are in court debating whether the City of Kingston has the right to evict English and everyone else living there.
He was among many of the makeshift community members who are carefully watching these court proceedings, as lawyers from the Kingston Community Legal Clinic (KCLC) work pro-bono to fight the city on their behalf.
“I’d have to think about it to put it in more definite words, but it means a lot,” says English.
The city’s lawyers had the floor on Monday, explaining why the evictions need to take place.
But now, the KCLC lawyers made their arguments for why the campers should be left alone.
They leaned heavily on the precedent set elsewhere — primarily that of the Region of Waterloo versus a group of people encamped on city property there.
A judge ruled against eviction there, leading the KCLC legal team to bring that up to the judge.
“The city wants to ignore the legal principles the Waterloo case carefully sets out, re-litigate this, and make law take two steps back,” said William Florence, the lawyer representing the unhoused campers.
Lawyers representing the campers went on to say that there simply aren’t enough shelter spaces in Kingston that allow and accommodate challenges like addiction services and safety.
They say this is why so many choose to pitch a tent or other makeshift shelter as close as they can to to the Integrated Care Hub, where there is a safe injection and ingestion site, and medical services.
“Without them, a lot of us probably wouldn’t even be here,” says English.
“That means the most part too.”
“I appreciate it and I’m sure everyone else does, you know, I thank God for it,” adds Nancy Smith, another unhoused camper at Belle Park.
Now that both sides have made their case, all there is to do is wait for the judge’s decision on whether of not these unhoused residents will be allowed to hunker down for the winter, or be told they have to leave.