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THUNDER BAY — Thunder Bay’s city council is set to discuss the municipal government’s handling of homeless encampments, considering whether to double down on a strategy that has moved to offer greater support to homeless residents, and discouraged evicting them from public spaces.
The protocol’s guiding principles include: recognizing encampment residents as rights holders, meaningfully engaging with them, avoiding forced evictions, ensuring encampments meet people’s basic needs, and that any relocations are "human rights-compliant." Some hope the strategy could also reduce frictions with residents who have sometimes raised complaints over the impacts of nearby encampments.
Staff propose returning with a report outlining consultation results and potential locations, service requirements, and costs for designated encampments by the end of the first quarter of 2024. It’s been guided by the city-led Response to Unsheltered Homelessness Task Force, which includes leaders from municipal government, social services, emergency services, and public health.
If council approves the report’s recommendations on Monday, the task force “would work to determine those criteria,” she said in an email. “So we did just that, and over the course of 12 months, we were able to successfully house over 100 people. That’s not just moving people out of camps, that’s actually ending people’s suffering and doing things in a really good way.”
"Every time somebody gets moved and gets shuffled along to another park, we lose contact with them. When we lose contact with them, it can sometimes be months before we reconnect with them, which only prolongs them staying out in somebody else’s neighbourhood." The recommendations come amid a shifting legal landscape, with some recent court rulings barring municipalities from moving people with a genuine need to shelter off of public lands like parks.
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