Downtown Hamilton councillor says homeless encampments ‘going in wrong direction’

Encampments in Hamilton have only grown in number since council scrapped a protocol that emphasized finding people housing before forcing them from city parks.

We've gone from 20 to 25 to 39," Coun. Jason Farr complained to city politicians and staff Wednesday.

Police, meanwhile, say they're taking a humanitarian" approach to those experiencing homelessness in urban green spaces with a goal of getting them off the street.

And we're being successful with it," Insp. Frank Miscione, who leads the police's community mobilization division, told The Spectator. It just doesn't happen in one day. It could happen over the course of a few days."

Just over a month ago, Farr sided with a majority of council to abruptly end the protocol that allowed tents to remain on sites for 14 days and made considerations for people with acute challenges, including mental illness.

On Wednesday, however, he took issue with the severely flawed" six-step process that frames the return to the so-called pre-pandemic enforcement of city prohibitions of tents in public spaces.

I'm not making this stuff up. The problem is going in the wrong direction," Farr said, noting mounting complaints from area businesses about tents in their midst. They also want to know how quickly this can be resolved."

The downtown councillor warned if the tide of tents wasn't turned back soon, we would be silly not to expect" more fires, explosions, gunfire, deaths, drug use and defecation in parks.

The new six-step process makes bylaw officers the first point of contact" to complaints, rather than housing outreach workers as under the protocol, which had been in place since October 2020.

If there's no voluntary compliance," officers contact the city's street outreach team and Social Navigator, a joint police-paramedic program that helps arrange for housing or shelter beds.

Bylaw officers then return to issue a verbal trespass notice" if people remain and notify police, who are to respond under the Trespass to Property Act.

But Farr said under Protocol 2.0," police will only ticket people they can identify as having been engaged in the pre-enforcement steps.

That's a gap," said housing services director Edward John, noting outreach staff are faced with privacy constraints when it comes to sharing personal information with police.

This is a very new process," added Grace Mater, acting general manager of healthy and safe communities, noting city staff plan to meet with police to work out kinks.

In an interview, Miscione agreed it's important for officers to know who has been offered housing and who hasn't. Encampment populations can also be fluid.

But offering as many resources as possible - even during the stage that technically involves police enforcement - is paramount, Miscione said.

Within a five-day stretch starting Sept. 10, the Social Navigator managed to direct seven people who were at the enforcement stage into housing, he noted as an example.

Whether to lay charges is at police's discretion, but enforcement is the last resort after all other efforts have been exhausted, Miscione said.

The Social Navigator has built very, very strong" relationships with vulnerable people who sleep rough in parks.

We don't want to destroy that relationship because what we find is if we just give them a ticket and move them along, they'll end up in another park and then we start over again."

The now-rescinded protocol sprung from a settlement between the city and a coalition of doctors, street outreach workers and lawyers who secured a court injunction in the summer of 2020 that barred the municipality from forcing people from encampments.

Last week, demonstrators urged council to not break up encampments and asked for talks to create a new approach amid a chronic shortage of shelter beds, affordable housing and health-care supports to keep people off the street.

On Wednesday, the Hamilton Community Legal Clinic told The Spectator it was painfully clear that there is little to no prospect of actually connecting people with appropriate housing" under the auspices of the city's six-step encampment process.

It is the same old story: people will be forced to move despite the fact that they have nowhere to go. As such, we support the efforts of (police) to acknowledge this reality, and their attempt to compel the city to engage in a more meaningful accommodation of individual human rights," staff lawyer Sharon Crowe wrote in an email.

Moreover, the legal clinic is deeply concerned" that city politicians will increasingly pressure" police to go against their better judgment to comply with council's ill-conceived decision," Crowe said.

During the council meeting, Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who is chair of the police board, said he'd relay councillors' concerns to Chief Frank Bergen as soon as possible."

Teviah Moro is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: tmoro@thespec.com