Frustrations and hopes were voiced at Tuesday's Town Hall meeting on the county homeless shelter at 310 Division St.

Cobourg’s Emergency Shelter. Northumberland 86.7 FM File Photo

By: Cecilia Nasmith, Northumberland 89.7 FM News

Cobourg

What Cobourg Mayor Lucas Cleveland termed an important community conversation took place Tuesday night at the Cobourg Community Centre, as the town hosted a Town Hall meeting on the impact Northumberland County's new homeless shelter at 310 Division St. has had on the community.

“We understand the significant impact it has on our downtown and our surrounding neighbourhoods, and we know many of you have been directly affected,” Cleveland said to the audience in the gym who were facing a table where members of council sat, along with the independent moderator they had arranged, consultant Kim Derry of the Garuna Group, a retired Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief.

“This is not a new phenomenon, but it is growing,” Derry said.

He noted there would be 42 speakers, and appealed for a respectful hearing for all. He also reiterated the disclaimer on the opening screen that had said, “Viewer discretion advised - the videos shown include scenes that some may find disturbing, including drug use and profanity. Attendees are welcome to step out at any time.”

Carol Ann Bell-Smith said incidents of harrassment since the shelter went low-barrier “have literally ended my citizenship in Cobourg.” Bell-Smith can't go downtown because – in her wheelchair – she can't step over people.

Cobourg's population are “perfect marks,” she said, since 31 percent of the town's population have disabilities, 30 percent are seniors.

Carol Layton considers the restroom in Rotary Park is now Ground Zero illegal drug use in public spaces and was the first of many to call for 310 to be transformed from a low-barrier shelter to a high-barrier sober-living facility.

Hillary Allen said 310 was acquired by the county simply because it was up for sale and appropriately zoned.

“There isn't an urban planner on the planet that would put this facility in this location,” she said to a round of applause.

James Bisson provided figures on what 310 Division St. Is costing - $5-million to get it open and $2-million annually to operate it.

Bisson noted that Mayor Lucas Cleveland now has Strong Mayor powers.

“If you don't use those powers appropriately, I will not stand for it. Because if there's one thing I hate more than organized crime, it's a dictator,” he thundered.

Allegations were made that people are being driven from as far away as Peterborough to be dropped at the shelter, and that people are allowed to bring drugs into the shelter and store them in the lockers, though they can't use them on the premises – so they do it in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Chris Amos also alleged a 90-Day Rule - “if you don't have a job or have found a place to stay after 90 days, you're out,” Amos said.

“310 is hell – fights, using drugs, self-medicating. People are voluntarily leaving 310 to spend time on the street camping out.”

Stories were shared of personal attacks on one's property and on the beach, confrontations in one's parking lot, property thefts and break-ins.

Long-time Chapel Street resident Rick Lovkin has been around Transition House in its old location as well as its new one. He said the average shelter stay is six months, and the average number of returns to shelter is six. Sixty per cent of shelter residents have mental-health issues and 61 percent have substance issues.

“This cannot go on. Raise the barrier, get rid of the 24-hour centre,” Lovkin urged.

“I'm not for it being a mental health and drug centre. Downtown Cobourg is not the place for that.”

One mother is hearing dreadful stories from her kids as they come home from St. Michael's Elementary School, the only Catholic French school in the county, located 450 metres from the shelter. Her children have had rocks and racial slurs thrown at them.

Alison Keyes shared the results of 199 responses to a survey on the Cobourg Crime Watch page.

“Eighty-eight per cent of the Cobourg residents want action to prioritize their safety, accountability and hope for real recovery.”

Almost 74 percent of respondents named mandatory rehab as the most effective measure as opposed to, for example, supervised safe-consumption sites.

Businesses owners had their own stories to share, one of them in the form of videos shared from the security camera of his business across the street. They're calling police, bylaw and security one to five times a day, Jeff Crowley said.

“This is what an oversized emergency shelter looks like when it overwhelms a small town,” he said.
“Raise the barrier.”

Jonathan Allen turned his back on the panel to talk directly to the audience, saying that the downtown has changed since the opening of 310. The people he sees now are different from the ones he saw during the Brookside encampment.

“They are people from other places, looking for something,” he said.

“Teenagers from the high school come in to hide from these people.”

A clear majority of speakers were opposed to the shelter or possibly just its location, but a number of speakers supported the shelter at least to some degree – a ratio of perhaps three to one.

Missy McLean won her own applause when she blamed the community impact not on the move of Transition House to better and bigger facilities but “the ongoing rapidly increasing organized abandonment of our municipalities by the provincial government.” The result is upper- and lower-tier governments turned against each other while affordable housing and other features of the social safety net dwindle away.

Julie Elliott, a harm-reduction worker with PARN who works at 310, asked, “Where do they go?”

Comments she has heard recently from clients at 310 include, “It feels as if it's illegal for us to even exist” and “We are constantly and consistently told to move along, move along, move along.”

She has experienced this kind of treatment herself, just having a quiet, respectful conversation with a 310 resident in front of Trinity United Church.

“No fine or incarceration or any sort of punishment ever did any good,” Elliott said.

From her own personal recovery efforts, she added, what does work is being treated with dignity, compassion and respect.

Bob LeDrew pointed out that 310 Division St. has been open less than a year, all the while under a microscope. No doubt there are problems and no doubt people feel unsafe, he said. But “I believe with concerted effort and good will, Transition House, Cobourg and the county can address the problems.”

Too many people believe that closing its doors means the homeless will somehow disappear.

“I think that is ridiculously unrealistic thinking. These folks are mostly local. They are in Cobourg because the services are here,” he stated.

What will happen instead is an increase in encampments and the visibility of these people. A harsher police response will result in more arrests – but also more releases, since the jails are overcrowded. And where there are convictions and sentencings, no one will get clean and healthy in jail.

“Easy solutions are very tempting, but if the solutions were easy, they would already be done.

A better action, he said, might be to ask one's MPP why there has been no Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Program increases while rents have tripled.

Catherine White noted that the face of homelessness has changed from a few older men to entire families as costs have skyrocketed, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic

“In no way is 310 Division St. responsible for the lack of affordable housing, inadequate social assistance in the face of these expenses, in adequate or unattainable mental health and addiction treatment

“We do have a drug problem, but Transition House does not house the entire drug-using population in Cobourg.”

To make it a high-barrier shelter, White argued, would amount to kicking the other people to the curb “like human garbage.”

“It's a difficult population to serve, but much research tells us the low-barrier shelter model works.”

A new Cobourg resident who volunteers with her husband waxed enthusiastic about this work and the people they meet at 310. But they do not live near the shelter and were extremely saddened to hear these stories.

“I agree – it is not the place, downtown. I wish you guys the best,” she said.

Volunteer Bruce Lepage said that homelessness is a major driver of addiction.

“When unhoused people receive the services they require in a nonjudgmental way, addiction becomes easier to treat. The key services people need is a roof over their head. Low-barrier models allow this process to begin,” Lepage said.

He urged the town and the county to work together to put pressure on the province to restore so many of the services whose funding has been cut.

“Speak to Mr. Piccini, speak to Mr. Ford,” he said.

Beth Bellaire, who cochairs the Community Liaison Committee, spoke of its work in representing all sectors of the community, including the business community, police and various agencies, trying to improve the relationships between the shelter and the community.

“We will be working to try to make things better, because tonight won't solve all the problems,” she said.

In succession, two homeless people spoke.

The man said he'd been ejected from 310 Division St. because of anger issues.

“I am now on the street, nowhere to go,” he said.

“If anybody out there can help me in any kind of way, I would really appreciate that.

“There are so many barriers in this town, you resort to other substances because there's no hope.”

A woman in a wheelchair recounted how “homed people” had attacked her when she was sleeping on the roadside.

“I don't do anything wrong other than that I have no room,” she insisted.

“People attack you and call you names.”

To make 310 a high-barrier shelter, she said, means everyone will be doing their drugs on the streets and in the neighbourhoods.

“If you've got an issue with drug use in the community, create a safe place,” she said.

Derry remained in charge throughout the four-hour meeting, whose crowd began to thin significantly halfway through. He said that the presentations of these speakers, along with input from 14 who could not attend, will go into a summary report he will make for council.