Sudbury city council looking for immediate options to help homeless people

As winter approaches, Sudbury city council is asking staff to look at options for increasing shelter capacity to help people experiencing homelessness.

At Tuesday'smeeting, councillors continued to discuss a strategy for dealing with the homeless encampment, developed by Toronto-based consultant Iain De Jong.

Much of the nearly three-hour discussion Tuesday night centred around what the city can do to help people immediately, while continuing to work on longer-term goals of connecting people with permanent shelter.

"We have to start today. We can't let these people sit outside and freeze to death," said Coun. Bill Leduc.

Motion for new encampment defeated

Leduc and Coun. Robert Kirwan brought forward the idea the city should create a new, sanctioned encampment, made up of ice fishing tents.

"It's not the best solution, but it is a start," said Kirwan.

The pair argued that a sanctioned encampment would allow outreach workers to easily provide supports, and the ice fishing tents would be well insulated and provide people with their own place to sleep.

Leduc and Kirwan played a video about a similar sanctioned encampment in Denver.

The idea of creating new encampments as a temporary solution is something De Jong specifically argued against in his report.

In the meeting, De Jongexplained that such setups are costly, and the money could be better spent on other forms of housing and supports. He also noted there's no way to force people to use the new encampment, meaning other encampments will continue to exist and outreach workers will have to continue to provide supports throughout the city.

"Our firm believes in making homelessness rare, brief and one-time. We don't believe in managing and perpetuating homelessness."

De Jong said temporary solutions should be indoors in empty retail spaces and warehouse.

"We would love to continue to assist the City of Greater Sudbury, but we have no interest in assisting the city if they go the route of a sanctioned encampment," he said.

Looking into other options

Leduc's and Kirwan's motion was voted down by council. The two, along with Coun. Gerry Montpellier, voted in favour. Coun. Michael Vagnini did not vote.

While most councillors did not support that plan, they agreed the city has to act quickly to help people as the temperature drops.

Coun. Fern Cormier put forward a motion asking staff to bring options back to council for "increasing the availability of appropriate shelter." He suggested that might mean using more hotel roomsor finding unused indoor spaces that could be used to shelter people.

"We have to do better than moving people from tents in one location to tents in another location."

Cormier's motion passed unanimously. De Jong said he would be happy to work with staff in the coming weeks to look into options and develop a plan,addinghe recognizes the need to move quickly.