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Year 24 • issue 16
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FRIDAY • August 2 • 2024
Refugee encampment could be built at Highbury Park by 2025 By Charlie Senack
A refugee encampment may soon be constructed in Barrhaven to deal with the overwhelming number of newcomers calling Ottawa home. A shortlist of three locations have been identified for the ‘spung” tent-like structures which could open as soon as summer 2025. Multiple sources have confirmed to the Barrhaven Independent that one possible location is on an empty parcel of land at Highbury Park Dr and Greenbank Rd. It was previously set aside for Phase 3 LRT out to Barrhaven, but those plans are expected to be shelved for a few decades due to low ridership and increasing costs. If constructed the tents would house 150 people each with two built in Ottawa. They would include private rooms, kitchens, bathrooms, and spaces for social services to be delivered. City staff said their target would be to house the residents for no more than 90 days before they find permanent accommodation, but recent statistics suggest
the average stay at another Ottawa-run site is 184 days. Barrhaven councillors David Hill and Wilson Lo said their concerns are not as much about the geography as it is with the concept as a whole. The pair brought forward a motion in early July to take away city staff’s authority to look at locations, but it was fiercely shot down. “These are people that are coming from conflict zones and they are probably coming from refugee camps. It will be demoralizing for them to come here and stay even longer in a tent,” Lo told the Barrhaven Independent. “I know staff have this aspirational timeframe that they will be there for 90 days, but that’s nothing more than aspirational.” Lo noted that temporary solutions would only add to Ottawa’s growing shelter system rather than dealing with the root cause of the problem. He said organizations like Matthew House and Samaritan House are already housing newcomers in a more controlled and manageable environment.
“The mark of the success of these programs is they are located in housing dotted through Barrhaven and nobody knows they are there. It helps them adjust properly to life here instead of putting them in a communal setting with 150 other people under heavy scrutiny of security guards and the local community,” said Lo. “These houses have seven to 10 people per building. Support comes when they need to help the clients get visas, language classes, and get their feet under them.” Barrhaven West representative Hill added that a more permanent option would be more suitable. He referenced projects in cities like Kitchener that were built in a relatively similar timeframe for almost the same cost. “Having lived in sprung structures myself before and having worked in areas overseas where there are refugee camps, I can attest that living in a cloth structure, especially for communal living, is not ideal,” said Hill. “We could put something better up in the same timeframe with
The proposed Barrhaven refugee shelter will be similar to the one on Heron Road, pictured above. Charlie Senack photo
multiple floors that gives the advantage of density which our official plan speaks to. A number of developers have said they could do this from soup to nuts in a year. That’s a more dignified housing first model.” Hill’s comparison to a sprung structure being like refugee camps angered some urban city councillors who said this short-term plan would be more dignifying than living on the streets. Both Hill and Lo agree, but said council should not settle for
less than what it could give. Somerset Coun. Ariel Troster said she was disappointed to see the homelessness and addictions crisis be “underwhelmed” by the suburban councillors, noting that her downtown area ward along with others has done its part to help the vulnerable. “There was some really inflammatory rhetoric at the Community Services Committee comparing these structures to encampments. Well I have to tell you what a real encampment looks like and
it’s happening all the time in downtown Ottawa,” Troster said at a recent council meeting. “I think it’s profoundly unfair that low income marginalised communities like Vanier and Heron Gate have lost the use of their community centres for years on end. To call this an entirely new shelter system is absurd. I think it’s fear mongering to people who have an aesthetic complaint to poverty. Guess what? Poverty is everywhere.”
encampment
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