Dufferin Grove Park encampment residents push back amid trespass notices

Beth Macdonell has details on the City of Toronto’s negotiations with at least seven residents of a homeless encampment in Dufferin Grove Park.

Despite facing the possibility of being forcibly removed, some unhoused people staying in a long-standing encampment at Toronto’s Dufferin Grove Park are refusing to comply with trespass notices that had ordered them to vacate the site by today.

Early Wednesday morning, bylaw enforcement officers arrived with several dump trucks at the greenspace near Dufferin and Bloor streets.

Seven people camping at Dufferin Grove were handed trespass notices last Friday ordering them to vacate the park by 9 a.m. on Sept 17 or face removal.

Cece Bella Cohen, who received one of those notices, said those staying at the park want stable housing, not just a spot in a shelter, and won’t leave until they get an offer of a “safe and secure place to call home.”

“We’re just waiting for one thing: We want one-bedroom apartments. If anyone is actually willing to give us a one-bedroom apartment instead of actually forcing us to relive our trauma by going into shelters we will take it and we will actually clear the park,” she said.

Cohen said in her case she needs a wheelchair-accessible unit.

“All we’re waiting for is a serious offer … Nobody wants to be here,” she said.

“The reason why we’re staying to fight and hold on until we actually have a home to go to is because the fact that the shelter system itself is too dangerous for us and wouldn’t basically threaten our health and safety.”

Late Wednesday afternoon, Cohen said the city has not agreed to their demands to offer the park’s remaining residents apartment units, adding that she and the six others still staying in the park have been advised that they may be forcibly removed starting as early as 6 p.m.

A City of Toronto spokesperson told CP24 that there is no plan currently in place to clear the site.

“The City remains focused on working with individuals encamped at Dufferin Grove Park to refer them to a shelter space that meets their needs and other wrap-around support services. Once an individual accepts a space, staff will support them to pack, move and store their belongings, as needed,” Kate Lear wrote in an email.

Several supporters made their way to the park on Tuesday morning to advocate for the handful of people remaining in the encampment.

“Right now, the city has been escalating its tactics against the residents here in this encampment at Dufferin Grove Park,” Michael Deforge, who lives in the area, told CP24.

Deforge said while the city has moved away from “militarized encampment evictions,” like those previously seen at Lamport Stadium and Trinity Bellwoods Park, to a more individualized approach, not much more is being offered when it comes to “permanent housing solutions.”

“And then over the past week, residents here were served trespassing notices and the city has been threatening mass evictions akin to the ones we saw at Lamport and Bellwoods a few years ago, so it’s been quite an escalation on the city’s side,” he said.

Deforge said those staying at Dufferin Grove want permanent housing solutions, not what is being offered to them by the city.

“A lot of people living encampments have already been through and can speak to the experience of being through the shelter system where basically what is being offered to them is that they give up their tent and their belongings and the community they have here to enter a shelter system that operates more or less like a shell game where they’re shuffled around from shelter to shelter and then deposited back onto the street,” he said.

“And when they’re back on the street they no longer have the community, the tent, or the belongings they had at the beginning. And someone who has already been through the process, which is quite dehumanizing, is naturally inclined to want to say, ‘No, I am keeping my things and I am keeping my home and my community, and I am staying here until the city is actually able to offer housing and security.”

Deforge said the encampment’s resident are open to talking when the city offers a solution that “actually works” for them and meets their needs.

Early Wednesday morning, city spokesperson Eric Holmes said since February staff have worked in Dufferin Grove Park to implement what is known as the Interdivisional Protocol for Encampments in Toronto, which he described as a collection of divisions and agencies coming together to focus on dismantling encampments.

Holmes said city staff have attended the park nearly 200 days in a row to work with people who are staying there.

“Our teams work very closely to provide wrap around supports with the unique needs of the people who are living here, because everyone’s needs are unique and different, with the intention of getting them to roof over their heads and shelter,” he told CP24, adding the goal is to provide those staying at Dufferin Grove with a housing plan, counselling, mental health and addictions supports, and other resources they may need to move out.

“We’re still meeting with residents, still trying to understand their needs, still trying to connect them to the supports that they need to move out of, the park, indoors from outside.”

The city said since it began working with unhoused people in Dufferin Grove seven months ago 56 people have been referred to shelter, while nine others have moved into housing.

In a follow-up statement, it said staff have made five referrals to indoor spaces since “resolution began on Tuesday.”

Some of those individuals left their tents and other belongings at the park, which crews began removing late Wednesday afternoon.

Holmes said despite issuing trespass notices at Dufferin Grove Park, the city’s “human-first approach” to remove tents is “ongoing,” adding on Tuesday the team “made great progress … in helping people accept the supports and the indoor space.”

“So again, that work continues. There’s no hard and fast timeline,” he said, adding the handing out of trespass notices is an “opportunity to … move things along a little faster, in a more concentrated way.”

“I think staff are optimistic that more people will accept some of that indoor space and some of those supports that we’ve offered over the last seven months and we can work towards, you know, getting people out of the park and inside somewhere.”

City spokesperson Russell Baker later noted that efforts are “still underway to support the individuals that remain” at Dufferin Grove.

The city has said that trespass enforcement can occur in two situations: if there is an immediate emergency, public health, or safety risk to those in the encampment or surroudning areas, or if outreach is unsuccessful and people in the park keep denying referrals or meaningful work on a housing plan.

With files from CP24’s Steve Ryan and CTV News Toronto’s Beth Macdonell