City recommends temporary village site, business owners aren’t happy
City administration is recommending the Miles Street location as the site for a temporary shelter village.
Rilee Willianen, drug strategy specialist and encampment response plan lead, said the city received 700 responses through a public survey.
Sixty-eight per cent of respondents said they preferred the location at 114 Miles St East over Kam River Heritage Park, according to the city’s press release.
When asked if the administration looked at other potential sites in the city, Willianen said, the Miles Street and Kam River Heritage Park locations best fit their criteria, such as municipally owned properties, close to supportive services, and accessible to emergency services.
However, local business owners in the downtown Fort William area are unhappy with the decision.
“All the people that are impacted directly in the area are 100 per cent against it. But people that live on the other side of the city or live outside the city or whatever, filling out surveys online say, yeah, we support it because it doesn’t affect us,” said chair of the Fort William BIA Aldo Ruberto.
The Fort William BIA has stated that they are strongly opposed to the temporary shelter village project because they believe there will be an adverse effect on the south side downtown core.
Jennifer Hoard, owner of Bella Curves & Pleasure Zone, said she is closing her doors on May Street because she’s had enough.
“I’ve been fighting a fight for two years and I’m having to throw in the towel because I’m right on the main road of May Street,” Hoard told Newswatch.
She said she’ll be re-opening her business on Algoma Street at the end of January.
“I spent $40,000 fixing it up to make it presentable, to represent what my business is about – which is acceptance and mental health. And now, I have to leave the area,” Hoard said.
Lori Paras, owner of the Hub Bazar on Victoria Avenue, said business owners in the area are dividing their time between running a business and being social worker.
“The homeless population deserve better than a shed in a parking lot,” she said.
“We understand the mental health, the poor mental health, of that part of our community. But the mental health of your small business owner right now is really, really floundering. Coming out of COVID, we shouldn’t have to shut our doors for several years. We had so many boundaries around us.”
Tony DiPolo, vice-hair of the Fort William BIA, said the temporary shelter village plan is “flawed.”
“It needs to be looked at better. I would even suggest that Toronto and Vancouver are doing modular buildings which is a better solution. We would and I think the businesses would support that project as opposed to this current project of modular homes,” said DiPolo.
DiPolo suggests that it would be better to choose a site in an area that was thriving. “It is very obvious that this end of the city is not doing well. People are on their last legs. They’re fighting to stay alive.”
“So the foundation has to be strong. They’re putting it basically on a foundation that is not strong, even if they have no empirical evidence that there are no side effects, that there can be no damage to the property values or anything. So, we can’t have confidence in supporting that.”
The city held two meeting with the Fort William BIA, said Willianen. “We heard their concerns. We took their feedback. We brought that back for our own internal discussion and we came up with some suggestions to them to help address their concerns.”
Willianen noted as part of the recommendation, the encampment site along Simpson Street by Kam River Heritage Park will not be considered in the designated encampment site selection process.
She also said the city gave the Fort William BIA board $40,000 “to help them lift their perceived concerns.”
DiPolo told Newswatch the $40,000 was what the Fort William BIA spent “to do the city’s job of cleaning up the streets and security of the streets.”
“We told them if you’re going to do this, we need help. $40,000 is nice and would probably help us and our members,” he continued. “But there’s a bigger issue, it’s not worth us taking $40,000 when this could be financially impacting the whole area for years to come.”
The Fort William BIA would rather see more permanent homes being built rather than temporary shelters.
Ruberto said, “In a nutshell, stop this project, work with the agencies out there, come up with a good solution that’s long-term, that’s permanent.”
Administration will bring their recommendation to council on Monday. – tbnewswatch.com
article website here
Two things to say about this:
- After all 80 units have been filles, there will still be a large number of campers in the usual areas. Maybe just as many as there is now.
- Who gets to decide which lucky “unhoused” citizen gets to live in one of the brand=spanking new units? Lottery? Will some of the Unhoused/Drug User Industrial Complex get to pick their favourites?
- The Unhoused/Drug User Industrial Complex will open up satellite offices near their new Miles Street “meal ticket”. That $1.5 million a year in annual maintenance costs are going to be given to someone.
- It must have been tough to find a location that was not located anywhere near residents or businesses of City Admin staff or City Councilors.