THUNDER BAY — The city's temporary shelter village won't be at the Miles Street location.
Administrations preferred site at 114 Miles St. E. will be off the table once City Council ratifies their decision to have administration come back with an alternative site.
During Monday’s committee of the whole meeting, eight councillors voted to oppose the proposal to build the village at the Miles Street site, while five voted yes.
Couns. Andrew Foulds, Shelby Ch'ng, Greg Johnsen, Kasey Etreni, and Kristen Oliver gave strong arguments on why the Miles Street site should move forward.
“One of the things that we struggled with, at least when I was a business owner, is that when the shelter house opens in the morning, people have their breakfast and then they're told to leave and shelter house shuts the doors,” said Ch’ng.
“Those people go somewhere. They go in doorways of businesses. They go to the library. They hang out at City Hall. Any number of places. But, they all generally stay in this area because this is where the services are. They could get food and then shelter at night. I’ve seen this back in 2012."
Couns. Trevor Giertuga, Rajni Agarwal, Mark Bentz, Albert Aiello, Brian Hamilton, Michael Zussino, Dominic Pasqualino, and Mayor Ken Boshcoff were opposed.
“Everyone's a human. We have to be careful how we treat people vulnerable or not vulnerable. Business owners. Human rights is to be balanced for all,” said Agarwal.
Agarwal said the BIA spent $20,000 on cleaning the downtown core and $18,000 on security.
“It's not a perceived impact. It's a real impact. It's a real impact to every business owner, every resident and every consumer that comes down into the area,” Agarwal said.
Administration said that despite hours of discussion with the BIA board and offering them mitigating measures for their concerns, including $40,000 to offset those costs, the BIA has publicly announced their opposition to the temporary village in downtown Fort William.
However, with this defeat, the BIA will not receive the $40,000.
Hamilton, councillor for McKellar Ward, weighed the social need for housing the homeless against the precarious nature of small businesses.
“I can tell you as a small business owner, this project cannot even have an iota of non-success and we're not really invited into the process of the operational model," he said.
“I've talked to other communities and they have political leadership actually leading projects like this. I think a lot of the trepidation and fear that you're seeing in the business community in the areas is because of a lack of information. I can't go out there. It's not defensible for me. I don't have the information either,” he continued.
The temporary village initiative isn’t at a total loss.
Since council ratified the 10-point human rights action plan, which includes the temporary village initiative, council asked administration to bring them an extensive site selection report that will include all potential sites across the city.
As of Monday, city manager John Collin said administration couldn't yet provide a timeline on when the report will come back to council.
