Barrie, Ont., mayor says encampment clear-outs will take months as outreach begins

Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall discusses the city’s issuing a state of emergency over encampments and access to social services.

Barrie’s mayor says the city’s plan to dismantle homeless encampments won’t be quick — but the process will start now.

The comments come just one day after the mayor declared a state of emergency to address the roughly 20 encampments across the city.

Mayor Alex Nuttall said some encampments are just a couple of tents while others have as many as 50. Notices will be issued before sites are cleared.

“It’s not an overnight fix. It’s going to take months,” Nuttall said during an interview with CTV’s Anne-Marie Mediwake on Your Morning on Wednesday.

According to the County of Simcoe Data Portal, there are 918 people experiencing homelessness in Barrie as of Tuesday when the mayor made the declaration. Of those, 720 are outside the emergency shelter system, while 183 are in shelters. The remaining individuals are in hospitals, rehabilitation centres or jail.

The data reveals roughly 15.6 per cent of Barrie’s unhoused population is considered chronically homeless under federal criteria, meaning they have been without stable housing for at least six months in the past year, or on and off for at least 18 months over three years.

• ‘You can’t just kick them out’: Mixed reaction to Barrie’s emergency declaration on homelessness

Nuttall says there are around 20 shelters in the city, and insists space and services are available for those who want help, including the city’s new HART hub — a homelessness and addiction recovery treatment centre.

Busby Centre’s executive director Sara Peddle said the mayor’s declaration is long overdue. “We want to see people get housed. This is a housing and homelessness crisis. If it brings more resources and more collaboration, then we are hopeful,” she said.

“Barrie wants to be the place that wants to get you help,” Nuttall said. “But if you want to live in a life of addiction and you want to live inside of these encampments, where we’ve seen a massive amount of violence … then Barrie is not the place for you. There are places that accept this type of behaviour, we’re just not one of them.”

He added that those unwilling to move into available spaces would be expected to leave.

“If you’re not willing to get help and you’re not willing to move out of a tent and into a space that we have available for you, then it’s time to move out of Barrie to somewhere else that accepts that type of behaviour,” Nuttall said.

While the mayor was vague on how exactly the city would enforce removing unhoused individuals choosing to remain on the streets, he did maintain a zero-tolerance stance on the issue, defending the legality of the city’s actions.

“I think it is legal in the sense that right now it’s illegal to put up a tent on any place in the City of Barrie that isn’t designated for camping, that’s what bylaws are for, that’s where the word legal comes from,” he said.

“And obviously, we need to enforce those laws to ensure we don’t have situations like double homicides and we don’t have situations where our drinking water is receiving E. coli levels that are five times what a closure rate is. So, these laws are created for a reason. They are there to protect the population.”

Nuttall also suggested some unhoused residents may want to return to their home communities, having previously said many living in encampments are not from the city.

“The reality is that each and every day staff are going to go around with their outreach workers and in a sense they’re going to have to move on,” he said. “If individuals decide to take their tent down every morning before a worker comes out then we will see how it goes.”

The mayor said the process would “start to move over the next 24 to 48 hours.”