The city has leased the building at 230 Queen St. for a 10-year term to establish a transitional housing facility that will provide “temporary” accommodation for people experiencing homelessness and connect them with employment and housing resources.

“This is technically considered a shelter. It’s not permanent housing, so it sits within the shelter system,” said Kale Brown, director of housing with the city. “The way our system works in terms of who ends up going to this building is you’re assessed by your needs and then we determine a placement, working with our various shelter partners.”

The Queen Street facility will focus on newcomers to Canada but can serve anyone who meets the criteria, Brown said, and will offer supportive temporary accommodations, the building includes kitchens, dining areas, washrooms, showers, laundry facilities, lounge areas, and dedicated rooms for meetings and workshops.

“It’s much more like permanent housing… You have an occupancy agreement where you’re there and you’re expected to be contributing towards your stay,” said Brown. “Again, this is for people who are actively, independently looking for their housing and just need a temporary place to reside.”

People well-suited to the transitional facility will require less support with addressing chronic, complex and mental health conditions or substance use. There will also be approximately 35 staff members and security, with staff on-site at all times. The facility will be managed and staffed by Catholic Centre for Immigrants (CCI) Ottawa, a local social services organization.

Clients will also have access to settlement and employment support, housing search case management, short-term mental health crisis workers, and weekly life skills workshops.

This is the second transitional housing facility for single adults in Ottawa — the other, St-Joseph Transitional Housing Program in the east end, exclusively serves newcomers seeking asylum in Canada who are experiencing homelessness.

While emergency shelters like the Ottawa Mission and Shepherds of Good Hope aim to shelter people for only 30 days, they can stay in transitional housing for up to a year until they “get on their feet”, said Brown.

There is an occupancy agreement and a “contribution fee” that clients pay in order to access the facility, because transitional housing facilities “must have a source of income,” said Brown.

The conversion project is the first of its kind in Ottawa, one that many community organizations and advocates have been working towards as the downtown core grapples with still-vacant buildings and a lack of affordable or transitional housing.

Office-to-housing conversions have largely been the talk of the town since the pandemic emptied the downtown streets and offices, but Brown said the Queen Street facility is a “unicorn” that will be difficult to reproduce.

“One of the reasons that we have pods instead of actual rooms is because once you put floors to ceiling, walls, around something, it triggers a whole set of additional Building Code things you need to do…” he continued. “So I think there’s a lot of excitement around office-to-housing conversion, but there are a lot of challenges when you’re doing really full conversion to actual residential where someone would have a lease.”

Ottawa Compass has previously spoken with JBPA Developments Inc., an Ottawa-based developer that has been working on several projects converting vacant office buildings into market housing.

While conversion to housing may seem like a no-brainer, Kevin Morris, chief financial officer at JBPA said not every building is suitable for conversion. 

Factors like layout, floor plans and the surrounding infrastructure and community all weigh in, and in some cases, it can be “easier” to just start from scratch.

“I think it’s a really promising model, and there’s a lot of interest around this, but we want folks to understand this was kind of a unicorn site in terms of having the right systems, HVAC, that kind of thing, to be able to do it,” Brown explained. “Not all office buildings are this easy to convert to some type of housing.”

Kaite Burkholder Harris is the executive director at the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, member-based organization representing 75 agencies in Ottawa, including CCI and providing a “backbone” and “coordinated effort” to ending homelessness.

“We’re really trying to make navigating the system a better experience for the person who’s homeless or in a housing crisis,” she told Ottawa Compass. “And increasingly, we’re trying to really drive and focus on prevention and diversion to reduce the flow into shelter and into the shelter system.”

While she said the conversion of vacant buildings into transitional housing is an “awesome idea”, she echoed Brown’s concerns that it can be a very difficult process.

“Office conversions seem like a really good idea, and then when you dig into it, oftentimes, they just won’t work,” said Burkholder Harris. “And so I think it’s telling that this isn’t actually permanent housing, but that they converted it into transitional housing and a bit of a different model, because that’s what was actually doable with the building.”

In the broader conversation of ending homelessness, she said facilities like shelters and Queen Street are vital when addressing the crisis, but she points to countries like Finland where homelessness has been “functionally ended” by focusing on supportive but permanent housing.

“The next step in our community, and more broadly in the city, is certainly looking towards how we move more and more of our shelter system towards a permanent model, knowing that that is the best model,” she explained. “We’re always going to need emergency shelter to some degree, but how do we both reduce the number of shelter beds that we need in this city, increase our permanent housing, and then look at actually changing the design of shelter?”

She said research has shown that permanent housing — where people can access support but live without a time limit on their stay — is most productive in reducing homelessness by using the “housing first” approach.

“Ultimately, it would be fantastic if we’re able to make that transitional model where you can access those very specific, necessary supports at a shelter level, but it’s a more dignified context where you have a lock and key,” she continued. “So that you get that level of expertise and support to be able to move to permanent housing as quickly as possible.”

The Queen Street facility is substantially complete and is now awaiting “soft items” like dishes and linens, he said, and the City is hoping that people will move in by the end of the summer.

The post Why the new transitional housing facility in a converted office building might be a ‘unicorn’ appeared first on CompassNews.

Ottawa Mission CEO Peter Tilley said more than 500 of them are living on the streets.

He said the homeless shelter returned to full capacity last year for the first time since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Ottawa is seeing higher levels of food insecurity.

“Food insecurity has risen from one in seven to one in four households,” he said. “Forty-six per cent of those who are homeless stated that they needed support with food insecurity.”

Ashley Potter, manager of front-line services for the charity, said more than 20 per cent of people who seek help from the Ottawa Mission are asylum seekers.

“Mental health distress, substance use, the loss of affordable housing, and food inflation coupled with an influx of asylum seekers meant that in addition to people sleeping on mats in our chapel, many more slept on chairs in our lounge,” Potter said.

“While the number of refugees seeking shelter is starting to decrease in Ottawa, our numbers show that need for shelter beds exceeds availability in this city.”

Potter said clients have told Mission staff that federal officials at the airport directed them to the shelter.

“Why are federal officials directing people fleeing war, violence and persecution to our shelter, where they have to sleep in our chapel or lounge?” Potter said.

Last month, the City of Ottawa scrapped plans to build temporary shelters to house asylum seekers because their numbers were declining.

Ric Allen-Watson, director of food services at the Ottawa Mission, said the need to distribute meals has also increased in Ottawa over the last few years.

“Before the pandemic, our annual meal total was just over 495,000 meals,” he said in a news release. “This year, we will likely serve about 1.3 million meals. To be blunt: that’s insane.”

The Ottawa Mission is calling on all levels of government – and candidates in the current federal election – to help address homelessness and food insecurity with measures such as affordable housing and increased social assistance rates.

More than 80,000 people in Ontario were homeless last year, according to a report from the province’s municipalities. There are now 25 per cent more people living in shelters or on the streets compared to two years ago, the report found.

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario, which represents 444 municipalities across the province, said a fundamentally different approach is needed to tackle the homelessness crisis, one that prioritizes long-term housing solutions rather than temporary measures or policing solutions.

It said that new approach would require an $11-billion investment over 10 years to create more than 75,000 affordable and supportive housing units.

The municipalities also said $2 billion over eight years is needed to ensure all people living in encampments are properly housed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 9, 2025.

The post Number of homeless people in Ottawa has grown to 3,000, local charity says appeared first on CompassNews.

Operation Come Home is an Ottawa organization that works with youth between the ages of 16 and 25 and helps to connect them with counselling and social services. For the staff there, it’s no surprise that prolonged drug use has adverse side effects. But as the drug supply becomes more complex, and with one of Ottawa’s safe consumption sites set to close down, executive director John Heckbert says his team is seeing increasingly “pervasive” health impact among the young people they serve.

The opioids circulating on Ottawa streets, including fentanyl, have been one of the main culprits in overdoses. But as the drugs become more toxic and laced with other substances, the drugs get more addictive, resulting in more overdoses, and it can be more difficult to reverse, said Heckbert.

Issues like gender and sexual identity, economic status and family situations put youth more at-risk. Youth can become homeless after leaving foster care or the welfare system, but also can choose to leave their homes.

“Sometimes the family has their own challenges around mental health or substance use and it’s a question of safety or care and well-being for the young person who was either forced to leave or decides to leave,” explained Heckbert. “In some cases, families experience exacerbated conflicts right now because inflation and cost of living increases put a lot of stress on families, and so if there’s existing conflicts that are happening in the home, those things get a lot worse and they start to have these more intensive arguments.

“Unfortunately, right now, we are also seeing a lot of youth who are either identifying as transgender or as a member of the queer community, being Two-Spirit, LGBTQ plus, and more and more of those youth are getting kicked out,” he continued. “There’s a greater intolerance among certain areas, and I think it’s an identity question for teenagers.”

The increased toxicity of the drugs is also being exacerbated with the presence of xylazine, a non-opioid that is traditionally used as a sedative and anesthetic for animals. Xylazine use among people who use drugs has been reported since the early 2000s, but was first identified in the unregulated drug supply in Canada in 2012, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addition (CCSA) found.

A report from 2022 found that traces of xylazine found in Canada’s unregulated drug supply were leading to an increased risk of overdose. The centre found the drug has been used as an additive, mixed with other illicit drugs to enhance the potency and “bulk up” the drug quantity in order to increase profits.

Xylazine can lower heart rate, blood pressure and breathing and significantly increase the risk of overdose and death. In some cases, users are unaware that it has been added to their drug supply, raising the risk.

The CCSA also found that for overdoses involving combinations of xylazine and opioids, naloxone can reverse the opioid effects but has no effect on xylazine. 

“This can impact the success of the overdose response,” the report said. “There is no pharmaceutical antidote specifically for xylazine.”

Fentanyl test strips also cannot detect xylazine.

Among the 90,701 samples of seized drugs analyzed by Health Canada Drug Analysis Service

between May 2022 and April 2023, 13,957 (15.4 per cent) were positive for fentanyl and 1,331 (1.5 per cent) were positive for xylazine.

Compared to all provinces and territories, Health Canada identified the highest presence of xylazine in Ontario.

The drug’s presence among the unregulated drug supply in Ottawa is raising the stakes, Heckbert said, making an already dangerous situation even more deadly.

“There are very, very dangerous opioids and synthetic drugs out there right now. They’re much cheaper to produce, I think, than they ever have been, they’re very cheap at street level, and they’re intensely addictive and dangerous,” he said. “Usually, about one in eight [young people] we see self-identify as people that have really significant challenges with their substance use. 

“They come to us because they wanted to reduce or end their substance use, or they wanted to change some of their behaviors around it, or feel more safe about it. We’ve learned part of the reason why people are seeing more substance use downtown, just generally, is that the youth themselves are saying they have to use in public spaces because if they have an overdose, they want somebody to see them so that they don’t just lay there and die.”

Data from Ottawa Public Health shows that opioid overdose occurrences are focused in the downtown core of the city, particularly in Centretown and Lowertown.

Like many community organizations, Operation Come Home is grappling with a major health crisis unfolding across the country and trying to keep up as the risks change.

“The concern right now is that overdoses, and repeated overdoses particularly, will cause lasting brain damage for people that experience them,” he explained. “And the overdoses from opioids are significant because they’ll shut off oxygen to the brain.

“If somebody passes away on the street and then is later revived with Naloxone, you know that depending on how long they’re under and how much is required to revive them, [the damage] can be significant, too.”

People who are revived from repeated accidental overdoses are showing long-term health impacts, including brain injury, Brain Injury Canada has reported. The prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain has “catastrophic” and permanent effects.

These effects, while relatively “new”, are “not unusual anymore,” he continued. Youth are displaying atypical changes in behaviour, he said.

One individual, a 17-year-old young man, became street-involved after conflicts at his home, including violence with his stepfather, Heckbert recalled. The youth, who Heckbert referred to by the alias James, was in and out of the child welfare system and had been staying at a church. He was also combative and reactive with staff, Heckbert said.

“He was very, very angry, which as a young man is fairly normal because he’s got a lot that he can be frustrated about. Life has not gone very well for him, and he’s not had an easy go,” said Heckbert. “But in the last six months, he’s not an angry man anymore. 

“He’s hardly responsive at all, very withdrawn, not talking. When he’s asking for things, he’s quite meek,” Heckbert explained. “You know, this isn’t typical of our experience at all.  We don’t usually see a progression where the more the clients become street-involved, they withdraw and become so passive.”

The changes in behaviour can make it more difficult for staff to counsel youth and connect them with resources. 

In an Ottawa Public Health (OPH) survey from 2021, 10 per cent of students in grades 7-12 reported using opioids. 

OPH has been working together with various levels of government and community organizations to address the “increasingly toxic and unpredictable unregulated drug supply”, OPH told Ottawa Compass — including how it is impacting youth.

“A key part of OPH’s work is prevention of harm by supporting and fostering resilient communities that support children and youth,” a representative said. “OPH’s training to reduce stigma and provide harm reduction strategies that engage people who use drugs are activities that can result in more people linked to care and treatment.”

In January, Operation Come Home received $1.3 million from Health Canada to extend its counselling and substance use programs.

At a press conference in Ottawa on Monday, Yasir Naqvi, Ottawa Centre MP and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health announced the funding, which will be allocated to a peer-led program and allow OCH to hire additional counselling and support staff.

The program is led by peers with personal experience with homelessness or substance use and will deliver information, resources and harm reduction support, first-aid and overdose response training, and ongoing access to social supports and counselling. 

The staff will also work closely with hospital and treatment centre programs, Naqvi added, to deliver wraparound services.

For Heckbert and his team, the governmental funding will be a “game changer” for downtown Ottawa.

“Over the last year, we’ve had to respond to more overdoses here than we ever have in our cumulative history, up until last year,” said Heckbert. “Just last week, a young woman around the corner from us passed away in the alleyway, but we were able to revive her after two of our staff had to administer CPR and several doses of naloxone.”

“It’s just a lot.”

And while he said overdoses might not immediately decrease, the harm reduction and preventative care that his team will be able to provide through the new funding will save lives. By working with caseworkers, youth can be connected to the resources they need to find housing, educational help or addiction treatment.

“Our goal is to try and reach as much of the street-involved population as possible so that we can get them under our caseload,” said Heckbert. “We can start talking to them immediately about how to keep themselves safe, and we’re going to give them all first aid training and the Naloxone training, so that we build a network of people in Ottawa that are out there on the street that know how to use these measures, to help save lives.

The post Local org warns of increased side effects of drug use among homeless youth appeared first on CompassNews.

The funding is available through the Unsheltered Homelessness and Encampments Initiative (UHEI), which has inked agreements with the Ontario municipalities of Durham, Toronto, Peel, York, Hamilton, Niagara, London, Waterloo, Ottawa and Sudbury, as well as the Saskatchewan cities Regina and Saskatoon. Collectively, this represents investments of more than $91.5 million over two years. The municipalities will match the federal funding.

Ottawa has said the funding will focus on creating more drop-in spaces with health and housing case management services. 

As a result of this investment, city staff will be updating its 10-year housing and homelessness plan, which will be presented to council in 2026, based on partnerships within the community.

Rideau-Vanier Ward contains three shelters — The Ottawa Mission (35 Waller St.), Shepherds of Good Hope (256 King Edward Ave.) and Salvation Army Ottawa Booth Centre (171 George St.) — and while Plante said the drop-in centre will not be in her ward, she said she hopes it can provide comprehensive, wraparound services that will help many of the people living unsheltered within her ward.

“We don’t know yet what the impact will be in my ward specifically,” she told Ottawa Compass. The key to the UHEI is that it focuses on people who are not accessing shelter services and instead living on the street, in cars, or elsewhere.

“There are some people, and this is very true, who don’t want to go to traditional shelters, sometimes because it’s violent, or their stuff gets stolen. Sometimes they get kicked out. That is all fair and very true, and I hear about it all the time,” she explained. “This is a lot of coin for a drop-in. So this better be worthy. 

“This will be very interesting to see what it looks like eventually, but I think the one thing I would counsel the city, or anyone who’s coming into this space is that the drop-in should be housing-focused,” Plante continued. “It should be getting people into solution mode.”

There are drop-in services in her ward that offer free laundry, food, showers, and other necessities, she explained. Instead, she hopes this funding can dig a bit deeper into the problem, collect comprehensive data, and guide people to the services they need, whether it be housing, mental health or others. 

“It should be a place of navigation, and not just necessarily a place to just have a coffee,” she said. “Those things are great, but for that kind of money, it would be interesting to see what kind of model they set up and how they’re guiding people to solutions.”

In a memo to members of the press, Kale Brown, interim director of housing and homelessness services at the City, said that “although Ottawa continues to have adequate beds within the shelter system, some people choose not to access shelter.” It also said that in 2024, the City of Ottawa saw an all-time high of 350 individuals living unsheltered at one time. 

“I hate when people say that ‘shelters are part of the continuum of care’… That insinuates that people have to earn proper housing. You have to live on the street, and then you have to go to a shelter, and then you have to go to transitional housing, then you have to use day programs, and then maybe, at some point,  you can get a lease with rent,” Plante explained. “That’s not housing-first. 

“Housing is a human right. Everybody should have either supportive or affordable housing. And you should have a place to live. You should be able to close your door. You should be able to go do the washing by yourself. You should not be worried about your neighbours stealing your stuff at 3 a.m.,” she continued. “It’s just wild to me that we are still with this shelter model that came about before the First World War. We’re in 2025, and we can do better.”

She also said she hopes the shelter system in her ward can serve a bit of a “cautionary tale” to the City as it looks to expand housing and homelessness services. 

“We still need to have an orientation of trying to get people out of the shelter day program and that hamster wheel. Whatever you put into place with this kind of money, set it up so people are set up for success,” Plante continued. “We don’t want somewhere that says, ‘Oh, it’s 4 p.m.; we have to close now; it’s time for you to go to your shelter.

“It should be a place where people can go for solutions.”

The post Ottawa receives $10.5 to address homelessness and encampments appeared first on CompassNews.

The motion, moved at Wednesday’s meeting by Rideau-Vanier Coun. Stephanie Plante and seconded by Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster, confirms Ottawa’s support of the Ontario’s big city mayors’ caucus draft motion, called the Solve the Crisis campaign, asks for more support from upper orders of government to respond to drug-related deaths and homeless encampments in their communities. 

It references reports showing a staggering 3,432 drug-related deaths in Ontario in 2023, while stating that there are an estimated 234,000 Ontarians experiencing homelessness as well as over 1,400 homeless encampments in the province. 

The motion asks for financial support, calls on residents to join the city in appealing to the governments, and resolves to send a copy of the motion to several senior government figures, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford. 

It also requests that the Government of Ontario appoint a single point of contact in these issues, make homelessness a health priority, and strike a task force.

The motion comes at a time when Ottawa Public Health has reported a steady rise in opioid overdose deaths, and the city’s 2023 Progress Report for the 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Plan reported that 988 people were actively chronically homeless in Ottawa. as of Dec. 31.

Also at the meeting, Kanata South Councillor Allan Hubley introduced a motion to consider the implementation of a vulnerable social infrastructure bylaw, similar to the one recently adopted by the City of Vaughan. It was seconded by Mayor Sutcliffe.

The motion cited a 19 per cent increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim, Jewish, LGBTQ2S+ and other minority groups in Ottawa and said Ottawa’s mosques, churches, synagogues and related institutions provide onsite services to vulnerable or targeted members of the community.

The motion said it does not intend to prohibit peaceful gatherings, protests or demonstrations. Vaughan implemented its Protecting Vulnerable Social Infrastructure Byilaw on June 18 and defined vulnerable social infrastructure as religious institutions, schools, childcare centres, hospitals and congregate care facilities.

Staff will consider the feasibility of implementing a similar by-law, in addition to other approaches to address preventing harassment and hate speech, and report to council in Q1 of 2025.

The post Council passes motion calling for help from feds, province in addressing homelessness appeared first on CompassNews.

On Tuesday afternoon, the man was walking through the area with three adult family members when a 30-year-old male approached the group while yelling incoherently.

The stranger then produced a bladed weapon police describe as a large machete and began swinging it about in a violent manner. The victim, in his mid-30s, was struck in the back.

“We’re very thankful that he was wearing a heavier coat that protected him somewhat, though he did receive a minor injury,” a police spokesperson told the Barrie Compass.

In the aftermath, two of the victims family members jumped into action. “They pinned [the assailant] to the ground and were able to subdue him until police arrived.”

The perpetrator was then taken to  police headquarters where he was charged with assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

According to police, the attacker had no fixed address and had been living in the area.

While Police did not discuss the motive for the attack, the spokesperson dismissed the notion there had been murderous intent.

“There were some underlying issues with the individual and his personal well-being that factored in [to his actions].”

The post Barrie family subdues machete-wielding assailant on Collier St. appeared first on CompassNews.

QP Briefing has learned the province’s big city mayors’ caucus is debating passing a motion asking the provincial and federal governments to take on “intervenor status” in future court cases that could restrict their communities’ ability to regulate and prohibit encampments.

The motion would also call for an update of the Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act to enforce mandatory treatment for addiction and some severe mental health cases, according to a copy of the draft motion viewed by QP Briefing.

It will be debated at the caucus’ next meeting on October 18.

A major goal of the motion appears to be pressing provincial and the federal governments to permit municipal regulation of encampments, advocating that courts should not dictate homelessness policies that override provincial and municipal authority.

“Municipalities need clear and enforceable guidance from the provincial government and must have the legal authority to act swiftly and decisively when public safety is at risk,” the motion reads.

It says court decisions have restricted municipalities’ ability to manage public lands effectively, making it difficult to handle encampments and ensure public safety.

Mayors say conversations around the motion started in August, during the meeting of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), of which the caucus is part of. AMO includes all municipal governments in Ontario except for Toronto.

A report conducted by AMO in July said that “some people living in encampments refuse offers of shelter or housing options, (…) There are situations when it is necessary to re-locate and/or remove encampments and find other alternative options.”

“It is not a sustainable, long-term solution for municipalities to allow the normalization of encampments. Municipalities need to act in the best interests of the homeless and their communities to find other solutions,” the report read.

Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall said the motion is necessary because municipalities need the system to work.

“Right now, because of the court rulings, we’re not able to enforce our bylaws and ensure that our parks are kept as, you know, safe, clean and welcoming areas,” he said.

“We’re struggling in some parks where our pathways and treed areas, as well as playgrounds, are being turned into encampments. We’re seeing a lot of drug paraphernalia in these areas, which creates an unsafe situation for our most vulnerable citizens, our children.”

For mayors across Ontario, the problem goes beyond managing public spaces. The mayors say that the root causes of homelessness — often undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues and addictions — are being ignored, and the burden of addressing them is being unfairly placed on local governments.

The motion says provincial and federal governments need to “take responsibility for policy decisions that have led to this humanitarian crisis and must take on a greater leadership role in helping municipalities address the associated issues.”

It will also advise the provincial and federal governments to develop a “compassionate, compulsory treatment program that expands the scope of and strengthens the system of mandatory community-based and residential mental health and addictions treatment under the Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act.”

This means individuals with severe mental health or addiction issues would be required to receive treatment, even if they do not voluntarily seek it.

The Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act are existing pieces of legislation that govern how mental health care is provided and under what circumstances someone can be treated without their consent.

Minister of Health Sylvia Jones has raised concerns about involuntary treatment in the past, but refused to completely rule it out.

When asked if Ontario would be on board with the mayors’ proposal, a spokesperson for the premier’s office said simply that the province is “looking at all options available.”

“We’re hearing from municipalities and residents who are rightly frustrated with the encampments in their communities,” the spokesperson added.

Brantford Mayor Kevin Davis said the Mental Health Act is outdated and needs to be reviewed.

“It hasn’t been done now for 30 years. We believe there’s a need to look at sections of the Mental Health Act that deal with mandatory treatment, and consider those sections in light of what we’ve all been experiencing in the last 10 years and what’s currently happening,” he said.

“I think myself and a number of other mayors feel that the focus is too much on harm reduction. This is an attempt to broaden the approach,” Davis said.

“I know from my own personal experience in dealing with alcoholics in my family and friends, that if you enable an addiction, that is not going to create the circumstances or the incentive for the person to seek treatment,” he added.

The motion will also recommend the governments to implement “Diversion Courts” throughout the province, to divert cases from the penal system to a health system. These courts will also:

“A. Providing the Courts with an escalating scale of penalty provisions in the case of subsequent convictions for repetitive trespass;
B. Allowing for referral to a Diversion Court for charges of repetitive trespass;
C. Permitting a police officer to arrest a person without warrant who commits an act of repetitive trespass.”

“Repetitive trespass” was not defined in the motion.

Finally, the motion advises the provincial and federal governments to pass legislation prohibiting open and public use of illicit drugs and public intoxication, whether that be by consumption of alcohol or illicit drugs.

“I don’t want to be part of a society or community that puts the trauma of adults ahead of the innocence of children,” he said. “We need to help those suffering from homelessness and addiction while also preserving safe spaces for our kids,” Nuttall said.

Municipalities plan to relocate these people into supportive shelter spaces or transitional supportive housing in social services that are available in each municipality. Some are run by the local region or the municipal government, but others fall into provincial and federal responsibility.

Supportive housing is affordable housing with on-site support that helps individuals achieve housing stability.

The wait list for government subsidized housing assistance in 2018 was 215,000 people. A study from the Canada Housing Renewal Association says that additional 143,225 units of affordable community housing are needed in Ontario by 2030 just to meet the OECD average.

“We’ll wait to see where the federal government would go in terms of working with the municipalities,” Nuttall said.

The post Ontario mayors discussing motion calling on feds, province to help in efforts to regulate encampments appeared first on CompassNews.

QP Briefing has learned the province’s big city mayors’ caucus is debating passing a motion asking the provincial and federal governments to take on “intervenor status” in future court cases that could restrict their communities’ ability to regulate and prohibit encampments, and Ottawa is no exception.

Although the motion will not be debated for a few weeks, Sutcliffe said Wednesday that he’s been in a number of conversations with the mayors’ caucus and “supports the idea” of calling on the federal and provincial governments for more support. 

“I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of years is that the challenge that larger cities like Toronto and Ottawa have been facing, those challenges are now being felt in smaller and medium-sized communities in Ontario as well,” Sutcliffe told Ottawa Compass. “So there’s a real consensus around the table at the Ontario big city mayors that action is required. 

“This is another example of the kind of challenge that municipalities can’t face on their own. These are big, big issues, and we need the support of other levels of government to deliver solutions.”

When it comes to Ottawa specifically, Sutcliffe said there’s a “long list” of issues the city is facing, concluding homelessness, affordable housing, the mental health crisis, the opioid crisis and the arrival of New Canadians, that “we don’t have the resources to tackle on our own.”

Conversations with the federal government have been ongoing, he said, but “we need more help than we’ve received so far.”

If passed by the big city mayors’ caucus, the motion would also call for an update of the Mental Health Act and the Health Care Consent Act to enforce mandatory treatment for addiction and some severe mental health cases, according to a copy of the draft motion viewed by QP Briefing.

A major goal of the motion appears to be pressing provincial and the federal governments to permit municipal regulation of encampments, advocating that courts should not dictate homelessness policies that override provincial and municipal authority.

It will be debated at the caucus’ next meeting on October 18.

In a news release in September, the Government of Canada said it is allocating $250 million, as outlined in the 2024 budget, to address encampments and homelessness across the country. The funding is meant to be cost-matched by provinces and territories.

In Ottawa, the City’s 2024 Budget outlines $204,384 allocated for housing services, down from the $206,426 spent in 2023 and $234,390 in 2022. Council will approve the 2025 budget in 2025.

According to data from the Ottawa Mission, the number of people living in shelters declined in 2020 and 2021 but rose again in 2022 and remains higher than it did 10 years ago with about 200 people reported to be sleeping unhoused. But the number of people in Ottawa needing support is rising, said Sutcliffe.

“We’re continuing to work with (the federal government), but we can’t handle these things on our own… We are helping a lot of people, but the problem is growing faster than the solutions we’re able to provide,” he said. “I think a lot of our residents are seeing the number of homeless people, suffering from the mental health crisis, experiencing substance use disorder… Even as we are helping people, that number is growing, so we need more resources to tackle these growing challenges.”

The post Ottawa Mayor Sutcliffe voices support for motion requesting help from feds, province in managing homeless encampments appeared first on CompassNews.