The city of Hamilton says staff put up boards to block heating vents at the back of city hall using improper materials and without obtaining the required building permit.
Advocates for the homeless had expressed outrage that those vents were blocked off in order to prevent unhoused people from seeking warmth there during the bitterly cold weather.
In a release issued Friday morning, a city spokesperson wrote that there was a “miscommunication” between departments that led to an error related to materials and permitting.
Matthew Grant, director of communications and strategic initiatives for the city, called the miscommunication “embarrassing and disappointing.”
“When that was brought to our attention and pointed out to us, we acted on it quickly and that’s being secured as we speak,” said Grant.
“We know and wholeheartedly believe and accept that we’re not immune to bylaws or policies that apply to every citizen of the city of Hamilton, which is why we’re moving swiftly to make sure that we’re in compliance.”
He also said the plywood material that was initially used to block off the vents has been replaced with an appropriate material that meets the required fire-resistance rating.
“We also heard some concerns and some questions in the community about the air handling system and whether that would affect the airflow. And so yesterday, I know that our director of building and our director of facilities met with a third-party engineering firm who did a review of that, and in addition to deeming that the structure is safe and sound, they also were confident that the air handling system could operate at full capacity.”
The cost of putting up the boards – known as hoarding – was $23,000.
Grant said that figure doesn’t include the cost of consulting the third-party engineering firm, but he did not have that figure on hand at the time.
Rom D’Angelo, director of facilities for the city, previously told Global News that the boards were put up in the interest of safety, citing incidents of violence and drug use beside the back doors of city hall – which he also said was a fire exit that was being blocked.
According to Grant, there were a total of 34 incidents of “unlawful behaviour” between Dec. 1 and the middle of January, including just over a dozen violent incidents.
The hoarding was brought to light last weekend when Roger Boyd of Men’s Street Ministry went to make his usual rounds, delivering food and warm clothing to the dozen unhoused residents who had been gathered around the heating vents behind the municipal building for the past few weeks.
When he saw what the city had done, Boyd said he was heartbroken.
“I just didn’t understand why it wasn’t an issue two, three months ago when these people were out there. And then all of a sudden when it’s cold, it becomes an issue,” he said during an interview on Global News Radio’s Good Morning Hamilton.
“I was disappointed that they did it during the most important time for the homeless through this cold snap. Why couldn’t they wait another few weeks? They’ve known about the situation. It just didn’t appear overnight.”
Boyd isn’t the only one who is frustrated by the city’s solution to the heating vent issue.
Graham Cubitt, director of projects and development with Indwell, said it’s “irksome” to see the city take quick action to stop the homeless from gathering, while Indwell waits months to get the necessary building permits to construct supportive housing for those same homeless people.
He said Indwell has been trying to get a demolition permit for a staircase that’s in poor condition at an Ottawa Street project that is supposed to be move-in ready by April, but the process has been consistently delayed.
“There’s never a sense of urgency. Even if we respond … within an hour of their comment, you know, you hope that they could just take five minutes, look at the revision and get it back to you with an approval. Instead, they say, ‘Oh, I’ll get back to you on Feb. 2nd,’ ten days out. It’s that kind of constant putting things off, which is so frustrating when all we’re trying to do is build housing for people who are homeless in the midst of the housing crisis.”
Cubitt said it would have likely taken two months for Indwell to get a building permit for the same kind of structure that was put up at the back of city hall.
He added that Indwell has 150 apartments that could be built in 2022 – all of them supportive housing that would help people who are homeless and are living with mental health and addiction issues – but if they keep running into similar delays, fewer than half of those builds will get underway this year.
“So we have the solutions available to us as a community, but we can’t let micro-processes and 10-day timelines get in the way of actually moving the needle on solutions to the crisis that we’re in.”
Grant said that the permit process for the project Cubitt referred to will meet the timelines and that the team has worked “extremely hard” to get permits to them in a timely manner.
The issue of the blocked heating vents comes as Environment Canada issues an extreme cold warning, with temperatures expected to plunge on Friday night.
The city’s medical officer of health has also activated a cold alert, which means five city-run recreation centres will serve as warming locations; those are listed on the city’s website.
However, Boyd said those warming centres only allow people to stay for a few hours at a time, which means those who don’t have anywhere else to go are forced to go back out into the cold.
He also said not everyone will choose to go into those warming centres and that there needs to be a better solution than constantly moving people from one spot to another.
“That’s the only way we’re going to end this – if we start providing services that can help them with their drug addiction or their mental illness, whatever they’re dealing with. We need to start treatment to get them off the street because some of them … sadly, they cannot make that decision to come in out of the cold.”
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