Sarnia’s request for advice on encampment washrooms denied

Sarnia council asked for comments from Lambton Public Health and Lambton County’s social services department about the provision of sanitation services at Rainbow Park, and other potential encampments in the city, but the request was narrowly rejected Wednesday by county council.

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The request was made by city council in a motion approved at its meeting Monday after city councilors voted down a request to seek a court injunction to remove a homeless encampment in the park next to Sarnia’s downtown.

After several county councilors spoke Wednesday in opposition to the city’s request, and the idea of ​​providing washrooms at encampments in city parks, Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley said, “I think the motion is being misunderstood. It’s just looking for input.”

But a motion by Bradley calling on county council to grant city council’s request for input from the county departments was lost in a tie vote, 17-17.

The votes of some county council members are weighted according to their municipalities’ population.

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“The washrooms’ part of the deal are not a county mandate,” said St. Clair Township Mayor Jeff Agar. “I know we have to supply shelter, which we do.”

Agar added providing washrooms could “prolong” the encampment. “I, for one, am against it,” he said.

Lambton County funds public housing and administers funds from the federal, provincial and county government levels to respond to homelessness, including funding shelters run by the Inn of the Good Shepherd in Sarnia.

“I’m dead against this,” Brooke-Alvinston Mayor Dave Ferguson said about the city request.

The encampment is in a city park and “that is not our mandate to supply sanitation into somebody else’s park,” he said.

Ferguson commended county staff for working long hours to help those experiencing homelessness, adding those efforts go unrecognized by many.

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“I think it has been explained multiple times there is space” at shelters “for the people who wish to go there,” Ferguson said. “We can’t make them.”

Sarnia Coun. Bill Dennis said senior county officials who spoke to city council recently said there is room in existing shelters and county social services would “bend over backwards” to accommodate those with special needs.

“These people live in tents; anything other than a tent is an upgrade, quite frankly,” Dennis said.

“What my colleagues at Sarnia council are really saying is anywhere these people go that they can’t smoke their dope at is not acceptable, in my opinion,” Dennis said. “This is wrong.”

Recent court cases in Waterloo and Kingston have found municipalities cannot remove residents from encampments without having sufficient “truly accessible” shelter space available. Otherwise doing so violates their Charter right to life, liberty and security of person, a third-party legal opinion for the City of Sarnia says.

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Dennis said supplying washrooms “is condoning encampments” and criticized the lack of action by city council to respond to the situation in Rainbow Park.

“They are totally MIA when it comes to leadership and empathy for the real victims, which are the neighbors and the downtown businesses,” he said.

Oil Springs Mayor Ian Veen said, “The county has done just about everything we can do and I’m going to ask the question, ‘what is Sarnia actually doing to fix their own problem?’”

“This is your park,” he said. “It’s not our park.”

Bradley said the city was seeking to learn where “the social service agencies” stand “on having this step taken.”

“This is a human health problem, and the county has been mandated to not just deal with housing, but the homeless,” he said.

“This camp is not something we sanctioned or put in place but there are also human needs now that impact on the neighborhood, impact on the people that are there,” Bradley said.

With files from Tyler Kula of The Observer

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