Saint John councillor seeking to remove encampments from all city-owned lands

Saint John, N.B., council will vote on a motion to remove all encampments on city-owned land.

A Saint John, N.B., councillor is seeking to remove all encampments from city-owned and managed lands within two weeks.

Coun. Greg Norton brought forward a motion that, if passed, would direct the removal of encampments from city-owned lands in a 14-day period to “restore public health, safety, security, and lawful use of lands.”

Council will vote on the motion at their regular meeting Monday evening.

The motion defines an encampment as two or more tents or structures, or one or more fixed structures, that are used for habitation on a parcel of lands for more than 24 hours. This definition excludes licensed campgrounds and lawful shelters.

Mayor Donna Reardon said the motion speaks to the urgency of the situation in the city and notes the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled you cannot remove someone from an encampment unless they have somewhere to go.

“We’ve known all along we’ve had a problem,” Reardon said. “We needed to figure out how to build the plane but we’re flying it at the same time.”

Ivan McCullough, the co-founder of Street Team SJ, said the proposal would be detrimental for people experiencing homelessness and called for affordable housing to address the issue.

“If they’re forced away from the uptown where their core services are like Avenue B, Fresh Start, the hospital, etc., if they are forced away from where outreach teams cannot get to them, we’re going to have hundreds of overdoses because people cannot get clean supplies,” McCullough said. “Harm reduction is going to be ignored, and that does save lives. As long as someone is alive there is hope for them, even if they don’t see that.”

If passed, the motion lays out a timeline of the removal of the encampments. A decampment plan would be published on Sept. 22, which would provide indoor alternatives, trauma-informed outreach, site safety and post-removal deterrence.

The removals would start on Sept. 23 and finish by Oct. 5. Staff would then file a report for the Oct. 20 council meeting.

Red zones

On Monday council will receive an update on the implementation of “red zones,” which are areas that do not allow for temporary shelters, tents or encampments. Red zones are defined as spots with schools, daycares, crisis care facilities, playgrounds, splashpads, cemeteries, sportsfields, railways, the Harbour Passage or provincially-designated highways.

If council approves the establishment of the program, the city will start implementing stage one of the red zone plan on Tuesday, which will involve an accelerated cleanup of encampments. Further stages will happen later this month and into October.

Last month, Mayor Donna Reardon called homelessness a “worsening social emergency” and asked the provincial government to develop an action plan to address the crisis.

“The cost of this evolving situation, human, economic, and civic, is unacceptable and unsustainable,” the letter read. “This is not only a Saint John challenge; it is a province-wide challenge that demands urgent, coordinated action across provincial departments, municipalities, frontline agencies, and the non-profit sector.”

According to the Human Development Council, 223 people experienced chronic homelessness in Saint John in July.

-With files from CTV News Atlantic’s Avery MacRae

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