Chatham-Kent wants to hear from you about homeless camps

Chatham-Kent has launched a survey to gather input from the public and businesses about homeless encampments within the community.

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The municipal housing services department put out the call to help address the “complex issues” and guide future policies.

“Communities across Canada have increasingly grappled with the need to find solutions that address the needs of both people living in encampments and the broader communities within which they exist,” staff said in a release Thursday.

Staff noted homelessness and encampments continue to grow as a result of systemic failures including:

• Lack of affordable housing
• Frozen social assistance rates
• Mental health and addiction treatment services
• Limited accessible emergency shelter space
• Broader lack of affordability for basic needs
• Insufficient municipal resources to address these issues

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“Chatham-Kent is seeking a consistent approach to better determine what areas are suitable for an encampment, and what areas are not, to reduce the harms that this crisis is having on the entire community, including for those living in encampments,” staff said .

According to the municipality’s Let’s Talk page, Chatham-Kent’s current emergency shelter, Victoria Park Place, averaged 99 per hundred capacity this year. There are 200-plus unhoused people in the municipality.

Chatham-Kent’s response follows “guidance from important human rights documents and a legal decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. This decision affects all municipalities in Ontario, finding that evicting encampment residents without offering truly accessible shelter spaces violates their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

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“This means. . . Chatham-Kent cannot remove people who are experiencing homelessness unless alternative options are provided or there are compelling safety concerns.”

Chatham Coun. Alysson Storey said she frequently receives calls and messages related to the issue.

“Whether it’s a business owner worried about downtown, to neighbors of encampment areas with concerns about health and safety, to volunteers at organizations who assist people living in encampments, to folks. . . struggling and terrified they are going to become homeless themselves due to the high cost of rent and lack of affordable housing, this issue is on everyone’s mind,” she said Friday.

Storey said no wants to live in an encampment, or see anyone in such a vulnerable situation.

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Calling it a “full-blown crisis,” she believes provincial and federal assistance is required.

“We have limited resources in Chatham-Kent and we are draining our financial reserves to do the best we can to address this humanitarian disaster. But we need help,” she said.

“And we need the public’s feedback on how we do that. It’s really important for folks to take a few minutes to fill out the survey to provide their feedback in an organized way that we can manage and measure.”

Survey inout will help the municipality “create an inclusive and respectful approach” on encampments, she said.

“I could never imagined in my lifetime this would be an everyday topic of discussion everywhere I go — or that I would see more and more people living in tents in my community — a caring and compassionate community that looks after each other. But that same community is stretched thin.”

For more information or to fill out the survey, visit letstalkchatham-kent.ca/encampment-rules-and-guidelines. The survey closes Aug. 30.

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