London, Ont., city council’s Strategic Priorities and Policy Committee (SPPC) is set to debate the new community encampment response plan.
The new plan sets out rules around health and safety at encampments, where they can be located, and what a rapid closure of an encampment would entail. The plan is based on community feedback and the input of frontline agencies.
“While major urban centres across the country and more and more smaller communities are all dealing with the realities of unsheltered homelessness and encampments, this report aims to not just acknowledge this harsh reality but acknowledges that the impacts can be managed,” the report reads. “Individuals (can be) encouraged to move indoors through a balance of compassion, community safety, providing basic needs provision, and creating more housing stock.”
The city unveiled the plan during public consultation meetings last month, showing a set of rules within encampments and a map of 14 locations where encampments would be subject to rapid removal.
Rules in place for encampments aim to limit risk of injury, illness or death, and would be assessed by visiting health and safety representatives. Examples of what would constitute a risk include:
Get daily National news
- Open/unsafe fires
- Drug manufacturing/dealing on site
- Human trafficking or exploitive sex work
- Unsafely disrupting pedestrian/bicycle/motor vehicle traffic
- Acts of violence causing serious bodily harm between or to occupants
- Biohazards
- Rendering City property unsafe
“The professionals conducting the review should use their professional opinion to assess the severity of risks and whether, in their opinion, the risks can be addressed because they are minor, or whether the encampment needs to close,” the report reads.
In addition to new health and safety rules, the plan also outlines where an encampment can be set up. Encampments risk “rapid removal” in less than 24 hours if they are set up at the following:
- Within 50 metres of any elementary school, daycare, playground, pools, or splash pad
- Within 10 metres of any private property line
- On or within 5 metres of any transit stop
- On or within 5 metres of any sports fields, inclusive of but not limited to, skateboard parks, fitness amenities, golf courses, ball diamonds, soccer pitches, tennis courts
- Any fenced-in, off-leash dog area
- Any cemetery
- Any community gardens
- Sidewalks, paths, municipal parking lots, or under any bridges
- Any entrance, exit, or doorway to a building
- Other areas posing a safety risk (flooding, slope instability, etc.)
Rapid removal would be dealt with by the Coordinated Informed Response by-law team and London police if necessary.
Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis predicts the plan will have a “rather lengthy discussion” at the next SPPC meeting.
“There are some things in there that we have been asking for, but I think that they are probably not what we expected to get back,” Lewis said. “Rapid removal response for encampments near schools (at) 50 meters. That’s not good enough. I need to see a longer distance than that.”
Lewis thinks the plan is a step in the right direction but believes there may need to be more a balance between encampments existing and not allowing them in London’s public spaces.
“This is not a perfect solution, but the reality is, there is no magic truck that the city owns that can roll down the street and pop out apartment buildings for these people to move into. It’s a lot more complicated than (some) may think. And some of it is going to require the senior levels of government to take this issue seriously.”
The report goes before SPPC Tuesday at 1 p.m.
Comments