2,000 needles picked up at former encampment near Ottawa O-Train stations: councillor

A former encampment was littered with drug paraphernalia; a scene advocates say shows the depth of Ottawa’s housing crisis. CTV’s Austin Lee reports.

Approximately 2,000 needles were collected during the cleanup of an abandoned encampment near two Ottawa light-rail transit stations.

In a Facebook post, Coun. Ariel Troster said City of Ottawa and National Capital Commission crews finished clearing garbage left in an area near the Bayview and Pimisi O-Train stations last Friday.

Troster said the garbage included “approximately nine tandem loads of material, over 26 propane and fuel tanks and close to 1,800 to 2,000 needles and other drug paraphernalia.”

“Yet another sign of crisis.”

A photo posted by Troster showed at least 11 staff members working on the property.

Troster says she and Coun. Jeff Leiper will work with city staff to replant vegetation in the area.

“While also securing the site so it remains safe for the whole community. The clean-up process was extremely hazardous and took dozens of people,” Troster said.

In a post on BlueSky on Tuesday, Troster said city staff confirmed no one was actively staying at the encampment when the cleanup occurred and no viable trees were cut down.

Troster added staff from the city’s social services department were on site in the lead up to the clean up, “to help people find better and safer places to stay.”

The National Capital Commission told CTV News Ottawa on Saturday it had been working with the city for the “overall area clean up.”

“Most of cleanup activities were on the city’s lands,” the NCC said.

CTV News Ottawa reached out to the city for comment on Saturday.

Troster says the City of Ottawa needs more “deeply affordable and supportive housing, especially for people who will not go to shelter for legitimate and understandable reasons. Housing is a human right.”

Sign more affordable housing needed

Kaite Burkholder Harris, Executive Director of the Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, said the situation is a clear example of why more supportive and affordable housing is needed.

“It’s heartbreaking. It’s evidence of the fact that people don’t have a safe place to use, that people are homeless and they don’t have the support, they don’t have affordable housing... I think it shows we don’t have the right supports for folks,” she said.

“People can be housed when they have the right supports. So, we do see examples of that and I think the big piece is the federal government getting back into the business of building housing. The private sector is not going to be able to provide affordable housing. At the end of the day, it’s about 40 per cent of Canadians who say the most they can pay in rent is $1,700 a month. Find me one developer who can build that at scale.”

Both Burkholder Harris and Troster also pointed to the province’s plan to pull funding for supervised drug consumption sites as of June 13 as a step in the wrong direction.

They argue it will lead to more open drug use and encampments.

“I think a bomb is about to go off in the ByWard Market and in Sandy Hill because we saw what happened in Chinatown over the last year. We’ve seen a massive explosion of public drug use and discarded needles everywhere,” said Troster.

“Even though the provincial government said they wanted to close the sites to keep drug use away from children, it’s actually brought drug use closer to children.”

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Adam Beauchemin and Austin Lee

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