In just six months, the number of new people staying in recreation centers doubled
The city missed its deadline to close the shelters in two recreation centers, which are now full of refugees, and it doesn’t have a new estimate for when they’ll be ready for sports again.
The buildings house Ottawa’s last physical distancing centers (PDCs) from the time of the pandemic. The city says these are important stopgaps for an emergency shelter system that is already full. But local councillors say it’s not fair that vulnerable kids are having to deal with a housing shortage.
PDCs first opened as a way to keep COVID-19 under control and make homeless shelters less crowded. During the pandemic, eleven new ones opened.Only Dempsey Community Centre in Alta Vista and Bernard Grandmaitre Arena in Rideau-Vanier have any left.
In a memo sent out in February, staff said that both would stay open until mid-August. In June, they talked about a plan to “leave behind PDCs” as soon as possible.
But there is no sign of that happening yet, and the centers continue to house more than 130 people each night, more than half of whom are new to Canada.
“We can’t keep up,” said Alta Vista Councilman Marty Carr. “We move one tape forward, and then we move two tapes back. There are just too many things going on right now.”
Locations of improvised shelters have been called unfai
When asked by CBC, the city’s manager of homeless programs and shelters did not give a new date for when the shelters would close. Carr has also not heard one.
She said that the wait is hard for the people in her area. Dempsey has a full-size gym for basketball leagues, gymnastics classes, and social programs for seniors, including vulnerable people from two nearby Ottawa Community Housing buildings.
Carr said, “I would like to have my community center back, but I would never want people to be homeless.”
Carr said that there used to be 20 free programs for kids at Dempsey that Christie Lake Kids ran. These programs were for kids from low-income families and ran all year long.
But, she said, “they haven’t been able to do that in three years.”
Adrienne Vienneau, the organization’s executive director, told CBC that the group is eager to return.
In the north, the Rideau-Vanier ward has three large shelters for single adults who are homeless, and four PDCs have been there during the pandemic. The neighborhood around Bernard Grandmaître Arena is the third most unequal in the city, according to the Ottawa Neighborhood Equity Index.
Rideau Vanier Coun. Stéphanie Plante said that keeping a temporary shelter in a downtown recreation center instead of looking for unused land in the suburbs sends a clear message to her constituents.
She said, “You’re saying that children in richer, more affluent areas don’t have to deal with social problems that affect every city in Canada because we’re only going to ask the poorest people to deal with them.” “That’s not fair at all, in my opinion.”
Plante has been to the arena several times since it became a PDC. She said that where the rink used to be, there are just a bunch of beds. She thinks that “PDC” is a code name.
“I don’t use that term,” she told him. “It’s an emergency shelter.”
Since the city is going to miss its August deadline, she thinks that the upcoming hockey season at Grandmaitre is probably not going to happen. The uncertainty makes things worse for her.
“You can’t just reopen an ice rink tomorrow,” she said.”There’s a process.”
The loss will hurt even more because Vanier doesn’t have many other places to play, especially indoors.
Chris Greenshields, who is the interim president of the Vanier Community Association, said, “There aren’t many facilities.”
“It’s annoying, and it shows that the city didn’t plan very well,” he said.”We know there’s a crisis, but they haven’t been preparing for a crisis.”
Greenshields said that there hasn’t been enough communication from the city. He didn’t know it was going to be late until Plante told him this weekend.
“They haven’t told us anything and don’t seem to care,” he said.”They aren’t telling the public anything, that’s for sure.”
The number of new PDC members doubles
In June, at a meeting of the community services committee, staff talked about a plan to move people out of the PDCs and keep from having to open a new one. It depended in part on a bigger allowance for rent. There was also talk about renting a private-market building to handle the rush of people into shelters during the winter.
But new numbers show how big the problems are that staff are facing in carrying out this plan.
On Wednesday, all 76 men who were staying at Bernard Grandmaitre were there. Dempsey was almost full, and 57 women were staying there for a short time. That’s more than in June, when 114 people used it all together.
In the past six months, the number of single newcomers living in PDCs has doubled. It went from an average of 36 per night in January to 73 per night in July. This is because of a larger crisis with housing refugees that is affecting the whole shelter system.
Since PDCs opened, city workers have helped 375 people find homes. But for every person they move out, more people come looking for a place to stay. There aren’t many other options, since emergency shelters like the Ottawa Mission are already full.
“It’s been a lot of trouble. Carr said, “I think we’re the only city or town in Ontario that puts people up in community centers.”
“It breaks my heart that we’ve had such a hard time finding homes for people who need them.”
“Reserve a block of hotels in Kanata.
The city staff has been looking for another place to house the people in the PDCs, but they haven’t found much. Kale Brown, the city’s manager of homeless programs and shelters, told CBC that staff are “exploring all options available.”
Brown said in an email, “We are committed to getting out of both current PDC sites as soon as possible, but they are both filling important gaps in the shelter system and helping with overflow.”
He said that the staff has already looked at more than 160 office spaces and 53 industrial spaces. They have talked to school boards, property development companies, other levels of government, and looked at the city’s real estate holdings to find an alternative.
Plante isn’t sure that the city doesn’t have any other choices.
“We have tools that let us book a whole group of hotels in Kanata at once,” she said.”We have to start looking outside of the downtown core.”
Greenshields also sees it as a question of fairness in terms of geography.
Greenshields said, “I think there are a lot of other places, and they’re going to have to choose.””Are they going to keep putting shelters in low-income areas that are more vulnerable, or are they going to spread these kinds of problems around the city?”
The city has been making requests for help. Brown said that his staff is talking to the province and the federal government to “explain Ottawa’s growing needs and ask for more help.”
Carr thinks that Ottawa could use their help.
“It takes all three levels of government to work together,” she said. “I mean, there is local work that needs to be done, but we can’t do it without money from provincial and federal partners.”