No one should have to sleep in a city park or in front of a City Hall heating vent during the winter. But some Hamiltonians feel they have no option. There aren’t enough permanent housing units or enough shelter spaces for everyone who needs a home. And for some people, shelters just don’t work, whether because they have partners or pets or mental health challenges that make a shelter unbearable.
A group of Hamilton residents has come together with an alternative they are presenting to the city’s Emergency and Community Services Committee this Thursday February 3, 2022. The idea is to create a community of 10 to 12 small, insulated, and heated cabins that will serve as temporary homes until permanent housing can be found and the residents are ready to make that move. Physical and mental health and addiction services will be provided, along with portable washrooms and showers.
Residents of Kitchener pioneered this idea with their Better Tent City, which has been running for almost two years and just won the Kitchener-Waterloo Record’s annual Barnraiser award as an outstanding community building project. Read more HERE.
On Monday, the public school board gave its blessing to the use of the grounds of Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School to launch the Hamilton Alliance For Tiny Shelters (HATS) project. With the city’s support, HATS hopes cabins will be erected and occupied this spring.
Bill Johnston, co-chair of the Affordable Housing Team, is part of HATS. And the housing team is grateful to the board for supporting the project and supporting having an unoccupied demonstration cabin parked in our parking lot, starting this month, to show the media and others what the cabins will look like. Details on how congregants can support the project will be available as soon as we know if the city is supportive.