"It Cannot Continue This Way"

CAO Pushes Council to Discuss Solution on Homeless Crisis

A large crowd of concerned residents attended city hall last night where council was set to discuss the homeless crisis in West Nipissing.

The local advocacy group, No More Tears has been pushing council to discuss this issue and the topic finally made it onto the agenda.

The conversation began with a lengthy recap by the CAO of the municipality who stressed that in his 23-years in West Nipissing, this was the first time he has ever had to deal with this type of problem.

The problem is definitely unprecedented. Latest reports indicate that there are roughly 26 unhoused people in West Nipissing and this number is growing. To put this into context, this represent a per capita rate of 1.78 per 1,000 citizens. This puts us at the same level as Greater Toronto which has approximately 1.83 unhoused individuals per 1,000 residents (roughly 10,000 homeless for a population of 6M). Despite having multiple shelters and warming centres in place for their homeless population, their comparable rate of unhoused individuals led that city council to declare homelessness an emergency early this year.

“It cannot continue this way. We need to have a solution.”

The town CAO told council that “It cannot continue this way. We need to have a solution.” He then opened up the floor for council to offer options.

The first to speak was Mayor Thorne-Rochon who appeared upset by the idea that council was even discussing this topic. In the past, council has normally started by thanking the group making a request and I found it odd that no one took the time to acknowledge the tremendous work that a completely volunteer group was doing here.

Thorne-Rochon quickly shut down any idea that the municipality would do anything or that any municipal funds could be used. She said that the municipality cannot spend outside their budget: “We can spend what we budgeted, no more no less.”

Her comments were in stark contrast to 6 months ago, when she authorized the new $1.1M covered rink in Field that came with an unbudgeted $450,000 added expense.

Or last month when council agreed to pay a consultant to undertake a salary review of councillor salaries (an expense that was not in the 2023 “budget pie”).

Mayor Thorne-Rochon mentioned repeatedly that services for the homeless were already in place and that “there were no instant fixes here”. But Councillor Rivard brought up the widely known fact that neighbouring homeless shelters in Sudbury and North Bay are already full. The CAO shared this frustration and said that the municipality just “didn’t know” if there was anywhere for the homeless to go.

When his turn to comment came up, Councillor Jamie Restoule who sits on both the District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board (DNSSAB) and the Board of Health also stated that he didn’t know.

He goes on to say that “the weather is not going to get better…I can’t guarantee their will be adequate space but I think there should be some effort to encourage individuals to take advantage of services (if any) available”.

The remaining 5 councillors chose to remain silent during these deliberations and no member of council acknowledged or thanked the volunteer group present. West Nipissing’s budget allocates $3.5M to DNSSAB to manage homeless shelters in our region and our council has never attempted to push them to offer services directly in West Nipissing. Our representative on the board doesn’t even know if they have room to help us…

I echo the sentiment of the CAO: It cannot continue this way… West Nipissing needs a solution. We need actual conversations, real actions. Not empty statements like we saw yesterday.

At last night’s meeting, Councillor Anne Tessier tabled a motion prepared by No More Tears which will be voted on at the next meeting. The motion if approved would:

• Establish an ad-hoc committee to ensure encampments are not removed by force until an alternative solution is established.

• Make West Nipissing formally ask DNSSAB to allocate a portion of WN’s $3.5M contribution to homeless initiatives in our area.

• Instruct West Nipissing bylaw to not evict any homeless person from municipal property until a warming center is established.

This motion is a sensible starting point. Because doing nothing is not an option…

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