Even peaceful protest gave Barrie councillors an opportunity to argue Monday night.
A line of tents put up near the waterfront last Wednesday to illustrate the plight of the homeless caught Coun. Mike McCann’s ire.
“I found the protests, I’ll use the word 'interesting' in its loosest sense,” he said. “I had some questions where the funding came from for the tents. I’m not sure what the tents cost, but I heard somewhere (around) $200 a tent, at 150 (tents).
“Yes, this is their business and not ours, but we do fund them, so I do believe we have an opinion," McCann added.
The Elizabeth Fry Society Simcoe Muskoka, the Busby Centre and Ryan’s Hope put up the tents May 11 to show what it would be like to empty out the COVID emergency shelters when there is nowhere to house the homeless population. Local organizations have received notice to consider moving those in the emergency shelter motel currently operating at the Travelodge on Bayfield Street, as federal and provincial funding is drying up.
Busby Centre executive director Sara Peddle has told BarrieToday there could be 100 to 150 people who won’t have a place to go because there’s no capacity for the homeless community.
“The funding has not been extended past June 30 and I think that was the point of the whole protest, that we could see people camping in tents as a necessity,” said Coun. Keenan Aylwin, who represents the downtown. “I think we all agree that everyone deserves a safe, affordable place to call home and shouldn’t have to resort to that (living in a tent).”
Acting Mayor Barry Ward said he went down to the protest and spoke to the people there.
“I think it was a very effective protest. It was very short-lived, very well organized and they had taken it down by lunch time,” he said. “They actually don’t want people living in tents. The whole idea was to highlight what was going to happen at the end of June if no place is found for people, that they were going to be living in tents.
“They’re not encouraging people to live in tents; they actually don’t want people living in tents," Ward added. "They were showing us the reality of what was going to happen if they do not get more funding.”
But McCann wasn’t done. He asked how the waterfront tent protest was handled by the city.
“We do indeed have a bylaw against the use of tents in our waterfront parks,” said Michael Prowse, Barrie’s chief administrative officer. “This, as it was a protest, the police are the lead as they have been on other protests and in conjunction with municipal law enforcement they understand the nature of the protest.
“It was intended to be peaceful," the CAO added. "The time frame was intended to be short, designed to be an awareness campaign. They monitored the situation, but no action was taken even though technically it is in violation of our municipal bylaw.”
McCann said he’s hiked in Sunnidale Park recently, as well as in Wilkins Park, and in Audrey Milligan’s Park and Pond.
“I see so many of these tents just discarded inside of our forests and I understand this is a very sensitive issue, and I’m definitely sensitive, but we need to have an action plan that removes these (and) makes it safe,” he said.
“We need to take some action and there needs to be an action plan,” McCann added. “There’s no action plan that I have tonight, but I just wanted to plant a seed to say as a council I think we need to have this discussion together, as a group, and understand the perspective that many of our residents have towards walking, hiking in our trails and seeing tents.”
As for tents in city parks, Prowse said when municipal law enforcement receives a complaint about camping in parks, it will respond, leave a notice on the tents, return and if abandoned or occupied operations staff will remove the tent and dispose of it.
McCann asked if shelter providers are handing out tents to anybody who wants one.
“I would not want to swear on a stack of Bibles,” Prowse said. “It is my understanding that some of the service groups are providing tents, camping gear, etc.”
Elizabeth Fry and the Busby Centre are providing emergency shelter to approximately 200 people each night, and helped a combined 1,100 individuals last year, more than double of what the organizations served pre-pandemic.
From Jan. 23-25, the County of Simcoe counted 722 people experiencing homelessness during its enumeration. Of those 722, 441 completed surveys and 50 per cent were from Barrie.
County officials also track bed nights used in emergency shelters, another way to gauge homelessness. In 2021, Barrie had 55,349 bed nights in its shelters, which include the Busby Centre, Salvation Army, Youth Haven and the Elizabeth Fry Society. Last year Simcoe County’s bed nights, including Barrie, totalled 88,017.
