Homeless standstill can’t be addressed until province, city collaborate

What we have here is a basic failure to understand the dynamics of homelessness.

Last week, the Free Press documented the friction between Osborne Village residents and business owners and homeless individuals seeking refuge at Oak Table, a drop-in centre that provides food, shelter from the heat and cold, and access to social services.

Oak Table operates out of space in St. Augustine Church, located on River Avenue just east of Osborne Street. The aforementioned residents and business owners, as well as employees of a daycare that operates out of the same church, all expressed concerns about discarded drug paraphernalia, garbage and open drug use by the people visiting Oak Table.

It’s not hard to sympathize with people who are tired of dealing with this mess and mayhem. Still, it should be said that Oak Table, a private not-for-profit organization affiliated with an umbrella social services agency called 1JustCity, is not in the wrong place.

Osborne Village has had a significant homeless population for many years now. Organizations that support the homeless must, by their very mission, provide that support where the homeless people are, not where we would like them to be.

Which is to say, the concerns at the heart of resident and business complaints in Osborne Village are, first and foremost, a consequence of homelessness, not necessarily caused by Oak Table. Our collective failure to understand that distinction is at the heart of our inability to alleviate homelessness.

Notwithstanding heroic efforts by the NDP provincial government to amass permanent social housing for the homeless, our current approach to dealing with the issue is as it has always been: push homeless people out of one part of the city into other parts without any planning or process and hope that wherever they end up, they cause fewer problems than they did before.

Why do we do this? Politicians know that people who have a place to live generally don’t care where homeless people go as long as they are out of sight and mind.

You can see this approach in a city’s encampment removal bylaw that has led to the dismantlement of many tent cities located too close to a school, recreational facility or daycare. Where have those people gone?

This “anywhere-but-here” mentality was also in full force when the WPS recently did a sweep of Main Street and adjacent corridors to reduce drug use and trafficking. The WPS has a report on what their sweep accomplished, they just won’t release it.

City council and the police would like everyone to think that clearing encampments and rousting people living on the street is making Winnipeg safer. All it’s doing is making it hard for the agencies that help the homeless to do their jobs.

Far too often, when residents of a neighbourhood complain about the impacts of homelessness, they direct their disdain towards drop-in centres, supervised drug consumption sites and other support agencies. Even though these agencies do not create or exacerbate the problem of homelessness; they are just meeting the homeless where they already live.

All of which brings us back to Oak Table and Osborne Village, a downtown-adjacent neighbourhood that has — with its proximity to downtown and wooded riverbanks — served for decades as a popular destination for the homeless.

If you got rid of Oak Table, the collateral issues that have drawn the ire of residents and businesses would still be there. We know this because the homeless do not really have anywhere else to go.

How do we help the homeless and provide safer streets in places like Osborne Village? This is where political leadership is desperately needed.

Unfortunately, the permanent housing solutions the province is working on isn’t manifesting quickly enough to deal with what social service agencies believe is a growing homeless population.

The province and city have to collaborate and find a more effective strategy.

In addition to providing funding for enhanced security and the collection of drug paraphernalia near existing shelters, the province needs to provide more safe and clean options for homeless people to live until a permanent home becomes available.

To date, Premier Wab Kinew’s government has refused to provide any support to a proposal from Winnipeg Coun. Cindy Gilroy to create a managed encampment to transition people from the street to more permanent housing.

The city, likewise, has refused to undertake a project like that on its own given that it is a provincial responsibility. Social service agencies are reluctant to press the two levels of government because they fear it might siphon off some of the financial support they are currently receiving.

Closing shelters and drop-in centres won’t solve the problems that worry Osborne Village residents. And at this moment, we don’t really have anywhere else for them to go.

Even though the city, province and agencies are all doing their best, we’ve become trapped in a pointless, destructive stalemate.

One that fails both Osborne Village and its homeless population.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca