Community collaboration aims to prevent homelessness in Gatineau
Taylor Clark
While those who temporarily call “home” what has been dubbed as Tent City face a lesser risk of freezing to death since the installation of heated tents, organizer of the Tent City Network on Facebook Sylvain Henry said little has improved. “It created new problems, but it was an emergency solution for the serious threat of them freezing to death,” said Henry. “Let’s solve the problem in a different way, with solutions.”
Henry became familiar with the encampment in the Hull district back in October when he and other Gatineau residents began distributing necessities to those experiencing homelessness.
Their efforts were later reinforced by an initiative known as Camp Guertin from Devcore Group which saw 48 heated tents being added to the Robert-Guertin arena parking lot as a temporary measure until May 15.
However, the initiative has been met with roadblocks in terms of Camp Guertin residents being able to access hot showers and a laundry facility.
Henry hopes to aid some of these challenges with community collaboration. Equipped with over 450 possible solutions from the public, Henry hosted the first Citizens’ Symposium on Change event focusing on preventing and reducing homelessness on February 4 at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 33.
Joined by five panelists, speakers offered their own solutions to preventing homelessness. “Homelessness is actually kind of new, new being 40 years old,” said Katie Burkholder Harris of Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa. “We didn’t have homelessness, but we’ve always had trauma. We’ve always had family violence. We’ve always had mental illness. We have not always had mass homelessness with 300,000 plus Canadians a year experiencing homelessness.”
What changed? Burkholder Harris pointed to a decision by the federal government to stop building social housing that is geared toward a tenant’s income. “All the increased income in the world is irrelevant if you just keep having an increasing housing cost,” said Burkholder Harris.
Although she did not have any new solutions, Burkholder Harris offered the tried-and-true solutions of prevention, coordination with our “mess emergency system”, and housing, but the proper type. “I love that we think right now that private market supply is the solution, but it really isn’t,” she said. “As long as we’re in that circumstance, all of the new housing in the world is not going to make a huge difference unless we balance it with housing that is officially low cost.”
Burkholder Harris emphasized housing was on a spectrum. It is the extreme end of a housing market that has housing as an investment rather than a right. “Some of the solutions we presented yesterday would help many of the homeless almost immediately,” Henry wrote in an email. “But we need people to test some of these solutions and implement the successful ones.”
The top ideas are to be shared with the Mayor of Gatineau as well as other mayors tackling a similar issue. Henry also plans to meet with Hull-Aylmer MP Greg Fergus ahead of the second symposium. “I have full faith that our government, or any government, may adopt a few of our suggestions. Regardless, I will test some of these solutions and report any, and all, success stories at symposium two.”
The next symposium is set for March 24, but Henry noted on Facebook a larger venue was needed.
Photo caption: The organizer of the Symposium on change, Sylvain Henry, opens the conference held at the Aylmer Legion, February 4.
Photo credit: Christian Rochefort
