Erland Missewace says if the City of Thunder Bay, Ontario, moves forward with creating a temporary village for its homeless population, it will finally have a sense of security.

The city council approved a new 10-step plan earlier this week to respond to the growing number of people in encampments, which reached nearly 200 this summer.

Part of the plan includes the possible creation of a temporary village, a concept that has also been successful in other Canadian communities. Under Thunder Bay’s plan, there could be up to 100 units where people can access hygiene facilities and on-site support.

Missewace, who has been without a permanent home for three years, is a member of the Eabametoong First Nation and grew up in Thunder Bay. He used to live in a camp and now sleeps in a night shelter.

During the day, he goes to People Advocating Change Through Empowerment (PACE), which operates a drop-in center on the city’s south side.

“The cost of living is very high. At Ontario Works we only get $400 for rent, while a one-bedroom apartment is over $1,000,” Missewace said. “This is crazy.”

Approval of the plan came the same week from Ontario’s major city mayors. Ken Boshcoff from Thunder BayHe called for more action from state and federal governments. Address homelessness, mental health, and addictions.

Thunder Bay is evaluating two potential sites for a temporary village, both at the south end: 114 Miles St. E. and Kam River Heritage Park. The goal is to limit construction and infrastructure costs for the project to $5 million and operating costs to $1.5 million annually.

“I think just having a place to stay, just having a place to call home would be enough,” Missewace said of the temporary village. “This seems like a great idea.”

Providing stability and on-site support to people

There were at least 1,400 homeless encampments across the province last year, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).

Camps include people sleeping in tents; City of Thunder Bay drug strategist Rilee Willianen said a temporary village offers a more structured environment with comprehensive services and gives people a permanent address.

Other communities in Ontario have also had success with this model; Kitchener’s Better Tent City And Peterborough Modular Bridge Housing Community. A similar concept known as modular supportive housing also exists in Vancouver.

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Thunder Bay is considering a sleeping cabin model. Although the city council has given conceptual support to the village through the 10-step plan, the plan is still awaiting final approval.

“The village is actually intended to be a temporary stop between getting off the street and moving into a more stable housing option, to get people to a place where they can stabilize and thrive,” Willianen said. he said.

The city’s goal is to have the village up and running by the end of April, when people transition from indoor winter shelters to sleeping outside.

“It’s much harder to find people once they’ve already established their setup; they’ve established their habitat outside,” he said.

Willanen acknowledged the timeline is “aggressive,” but emphasized that the community’s homeless population needs a temporary solution while longer-term temporary housing units are built.

Members of the public are encouraged complete a surveyAvailable until October 31 on where they think the temporary village should be built.

“We’re not just looking at this from the perspective of what’s best for people experiencing homelessness — we’re also looking at this from the perspective of what’s best for the people who live in the area, the people who work in the area,” Willianen said.

‘They’re just in survival mode’

Another feature of Thunder Bay’s 10-step plan is the creation of a committee made up of people who have experienced or are experiencing homelessness to inform the city’s strategy moving forward.

“We know that people living in tents on the streets have the most expertise on issues that will help make their lives better,” Willianen said. he said.

CBC News Spoke to several people at PACE who had experienced homelessness to hear your thoughts on the temporary village.

“I think this is great and I think it should have been done sooner,” said Lorri-Lyn Walker, PACE membership coordinator.

Walker was homeless for eight months while in active addiction. He is now seven years into recovery and uses his role at PACE to help others connect with community resources.

In his opinion, the temporary village should be managed by peer support workers who can provide on-site assistance.

Bradley Prince, who was staying at a night shelter in Thunder Bay, has been sober for three months. He said PACE employees, who have experienced the challenges his clients go through, help him move toward his goals. He started a new job this week.

“The main thing that I think we all need is people like Lorri who helped me and people who come from the past but come out of that past with a lot of knowledge to support the people around them,” Prince said.

PACE client Robert Dennhardt, who was previously homeless, said the village was a great idea and reminded him of the old days. Tiny house projects he’s seen on the East Coast.

Hazel Cripps, who left her apartment because of an incident that made her feel unsafe, said she would prefer the city convert vacant buildings into housing units rather than spending money on temporary shelters.

Everyone at PACE agreed that any approach to homelessness must be guided by compassion.

“Our customers are harmless. People living in tents are harmless; they’re just in survival mode,” Walker said.

“If people from the city would come down and actually talk to them and listen to their stories and not just assume they’re homeless or drug addicts, they don’t know what happened to them the night before.”

Sleeping cabins versus tiny houses

Carrie Anne Marshall is associate professor and director of social justice at the mental health research laboratory at the School of Occupational Therapy, Western University of London.

He researched the rise of tiny house and sleeping cabin communities in North America and said it’s important to distinguish between the two.

“To me, a tiny house is a self-contained unit with all the amenities we expect from a regular house. It’s just smaller,” Marshall said. “To me, sleeping cabins are generally 8-by-10 (foot) structures that don’t have the amenities of a regular home.”

While tiny homes have been proven to give people a sense of security and belonging, “we have no evidence to compare sleeping cabin communities to shelter spaces and say whether one is better than the other.”

“I think if community advocates are trying to find solutions in the absence of other resources and want to help people stay warm, I think that’s a really nice strategy to help people in the short term,” Marshall said of the temporary village. concept.

“What I am increasingly concerned about is where we are using public money that could be allocated to increasing the capacity of shelters or permanent supportive housing programs” for “a temporary system with little evidence to support it.”

In the Thunder Bay case, Willianen said the city is paying attention to what other communities are doing to address homelessness in the most thoughtful and effective way, taking into account people “living unsheltered” and the broader community.

“To give them the tools and skills to transition into something that will support them not just in this time of crisis, but throughout their lives.”