City of Hamilton staff proposals for dealing with encampments will be presented to city councillors on August 14/23. That plan likely will include provision for “sanctioned encampments,” that is, encampments that the city both allows and provides services for. A key question will be whether the tiny cabin village proposed by the Hamilton Alliance for Tiny Shelters might be approved as a sanctioned encampment and if so, under what conditions.
The staff report will include how the city proposes to handle other encampments that aren’t approved but are allowed.
A court decision in Waterloo earlier this year makes it clear that people have a right to live somewhere and if cities don’t provide enough shelter spaces to shelter everyone sleeping outside, then they have to allow encampments. Key questions are where they will be allowed and under what conditions.
The recommendations will be contentious.
Behind the encampment questions is a fundamental issue: what’s the City of Hamilton’s plan to get enough non-profit housing built, with enough services, to allow the dignity of a permanent, secure, affordable home not just for the 1,734 individuals the city knows are homeless but the 28,000 households in core housing need? A specific, one-year plan is to come in November, though it is likely to focus only on the 165 who are homeless and unsheltered or the roughly 500 who are chronically homeless.