Dozens displaced as encampment near Blackfriars Bridge shut down

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Outreach workers say the city of London has put lives at greater risk by shutting down a large, and for a time, sanctioned homeless encampment along the Thames River north of Blackfriars Bridge.

Some of those moved from the Ann Street Park encampment still haven’t found a place to shelter and others are leery of heading to other encampments they don’t know or fear, outreach workers said.

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“It’s really unfortunate to see people displaced from place to place. You finally start to build a little bit of community, establish a little bit of mutual care for one another, and off you go again,” Darryl Reckman, executive director of Sanctuary London, said.

“It’s caused a fair bit of anxiety within the community. People don’t know where other people are. People are concerned for their safety having to find other places to go,” Mechele TeBrake, a Sanctuary outreach and housing worker, added. “Some people are still looking. I know of three people who have nowhere to go. They’re kind of landing wherever they fall and they sleep, if they sleep.”

The city has also closed the homeless service depot for the Ann Street encampment, one of four depots established last summer and touted as keys to community health and safety. Only one of the depots is still operating.

Like the others, the depot at Ann Street Park had provided basic needs such as water and food, a portable washroom, and garbage collection to homeless Londoners unable to find shelter or housing.

“The encampment service depot located at Ann Street Park has been closed in response to safety concerns for the individuals who were living there, as well as nearby residents,” city hall said in an emailed statement to The London Free Press.

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“The site is no longer a viable location for encampments and a service depot due to several factors, including issues identified during routine on-site evaluations of health and safety protocols, as well as its location in a flood zone where recent significant rain events have put encampment residents at risk,” the city said.

Campers were notified in August about the evictions, and the encampment was cleared starting Oct. 3, city officials said.

The 25 to 40 people living in the encampment didn’t see the place as unsafe, certainly from each other, outreach workers said.

Construction workers at one site sometimes threw cinder blocks into the encampment site, but neighbours in the area brought clothing, food, firewater and water to campers, TeBrake said.

Sanctuary London’s building is near the Ann Street site and outreach workers worked with homeless campers there daily, she said.

The city used whatever excuse was handy to move people around within the encampment for months, and then push them out, Dan Oudshoorn, also a housing and outreach worker at Sanctuary London, said.

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“There’s this rotating list of items you can use to justify cleaning a site. You see health and safety used as an enforcement tool, to justify displacing people,” he said. “There’s never ‘How do we continue to support and build the community here?’ ”

Most of the campers already lived far above the flood plain and those who pitched tents too close to the river had been moved to safety, Oudshoorn said.

City officials say “several” people moved to different encampments right away, while others were offered indoor shelter “as first steps to establishing pathways out of encampments.”

“Some individuals chose to remain outdoors, and municipal law enforcement officers assisted with moving of personal items and camp set up relocation, while outreach workers from partner agencies assisted with the transport of people and animals,” the city hall statement said.

The official estimate puts the number of Londoners living without shelter at 180, but city officials and outreach workers say the number is actually quite higher.

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Sanctuary London outreach staff put the number at several hundred.

“There are so many unseen people out there,” Reckman said.

The clearing of the Ann Street Park encampment comes as city hall considers strategies to protect people during the winter.

So far, the only strategy is relying on 90 shelter beds run by Ark Aid Street Mission, those beds not yet approved for funding past Dec. 31.

Outreach workers at several organizations say they haven’t heard of any other plans from city hall yet.

City officials said options for new service depots will be brought to council this month.

Established last summer, four depots were touted as a successful way to help the hundreds of Londoners living without any shelter, many of them forced to survive in homeless encampments or camps along the Thames River.

There’s only one left, at Watson Park. Two others were closed because of construction projects, city hall says.

The service depots were part of an encampment strategy developed by homelessness organizations and city hall.

The heads of the community encampment strategy, members of homelessness organizations, could not be reached for comment.

rrichmond@postmedia.com

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