Front Burner - Kenora, ON, closes sole homeless shelter in the midst of a drug crisis

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

Kenora Ontario, a small city in the province’s northwest, is in the midst of a drug crisis. In an attempt to address the situation, the city has temporarily shut down the only homeless shelter in the area. Some see it as a positive move, others see NIMBYism. Today on Front Burner, TVO reporter Jon Thompson, helps us understand the roots of the city’s drugs crisis and how it’s affecting the local population.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Matthew Braga, filling in for Jamie Boisson. Kenora, Ontario is a city of 15,000 people in northwestern Ontario. And today, Kenora is caught in the grips of an opioid crisis. And health officials say things are only getting worse.

Over the last few months, a surge of crystal meth has flooded the city. This influx of drug use and poverty has heightened tensions between local residents, businesses, health providers, and politicians. And now the focus has turned on the city's only homeless shelter, after complaints of illegal activity in and around the shelter. The city has decided to temporarily shut it down for 45 days to try and get things under control. There are echoes of the story across the country, and today I'm joined by TVO's northwestern Ontario reporter, John Thompson, who has spent the past couple of weeks in Kenora. This is Frontburner. John, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me.

So I have never been to Kenora, but I understand that you've been there for the past couple of weeks. You're really familiar with the area, in fact. And so maybe you can tell me a little bit about what the region is like this time of year. I mean, what brings people to the city? I understand it's a bit of a tourist destination right about now. Yes. Kenora is to Winnipeg what Muskoka is to Toronto. It's a picturesque scenery, thousands of islands on a somewhat shallow, warm lake, Lake of the Woods. The lake is studded with thousands of majestic evergreen plumed islands, most of which are wild and uninhabited.

And it's about 15,000 people. There are probably 10 First Nations that surround Kenora. And it was started as a mining city, went to pulp and paper, and it has turned into gradually this tourist town that it is today. And now, like many Canadian cities in recent years, I understand that Kenora has also been dealing with an opioid crisis of its own. Health officials are linking opioids to a decreasing life expectancy in B.C. and possibly the rest of the country. But in the last six months, there's been a new influx of drugs.

And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about that. The Ontario Provincial Police is telling us that there's been an influx of crystal methamphetamine from Winnipeg. At Winnipeg's only publicly funded detox facility, meth now accounts for more than half the cases. Staff are specially trained. We're definitely tight and tasked. I've had to double some of my staff in some areas because of the potential for violence. So this is something that's impacting Winnipeg and many communities in the Midwest very deeply. What happens in Kenora, as I suggested, in tourism is very tightly connected to what happens in Winnipeg. And so when we saw the opiate crisis

really land in Winnipeg, we saw it almost immediately land in Kenora. And so to give you an idea, like I said, there's 15,000 people here. The health unit handed out 288,000 needles last year, and that was up from 239,000 the year before. There is a figure from the Kenora District Services Board that says there are about 200 people living on the streets at any one time in Kenora, which sounds to me like a pretty high number for a city of about 15,000 people. And I was wondering if you could help put that into context. I mean, why is homelessness such an issue in Kenora? How would you characterize the number of people that are living on the streets day to day? That 220 number is important. That includes people who are destitutely homeless every night. But it also includes people who are precariously housed, people who are transient, and people who are couch surfing, people who are essentially bouncing to friends' or relatives' places

for as long as they can wear out their living. And so that is an important figure. According to the KDSB, there are between 32 and 36 people that are staying in the shelter every night. This is something that's been, there has been a visible homeless population in Kenora for decades. And that has to do, has historically had to do, with the relationship between the state and Indigenous people. The residential school system, the 60s scoop, intergenerational trauma. From the early 1900s, there were three residential schools in the area. Many children tried to run away. Some died.

That population has been largely Indigenous. We're told that from the most recent emergency vehicles figures, that since the onset of the crystal meth crisis, we're actually seeing somewhat of a balance in terms of indigenous people and non that are using emergency services due to drugs and alcohol. So that is an enormous departure from normal. And are these people that are local to Kenora or are they coming from those cities like Winnipeg as well or other places in the region? I've spoken to some people who have come from Winnipeg who are trying to get out to start a new life. I've met people who are from the surrounding First Nations because Kenora is what

they call a service hub. There are virtually no services available in First Nations. And so the way Northern Ontario works is the First Nations that surround a community kind of gravitate to the municipality in order to receive those services. And then there are a lot of people from Kenora as well. Speaking of services, you had mentioned previously a shelter in Kenora. It's used by about three dozen people every night. And when the shelter opened in February, it was in the basement of a downtown church, the Knox United Church. It was a long time coming for people there. What did the opening of the shelter mean for the community? This has been a saga that went back to prior to 2016. Homelessness in northwestern Ontario has been desperately underfunded for a long, long time.

And the fellowship center in Kenora that was providing those overnight services for a number of years said in 2016, we're not going to be able to do this anymore. The Northwestern Health Unit then stepped in and supported an emergency temporary shelter in their facility up until this spring, at which point the MPP, Kenora Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford, unveiled a $1.1 million renovation to the basement of Knox United Church on 2nd Street, which is the commercial drag in Kenora. So this shelter has been operating for the last five months, and then something happens this month, where the member of provincial parliament for the region, Greg Rickford, says the shelter would be temporarily closing this month for what he called a, quote, reset. Things have been escalating in our city and it's time for us to take some steps.

I think what this is is a reset button here. I think all options will ultimately be on the table. here. I think all options will ultimately be on the table, but until we have a plan that this community has agreed to. Why the reset? Why shut the shelter down after only a few months in operation? Rickford's words were, we want our city back. And Rickford said on July 29th that he is giving an eviction notice to the people who are staying in that shelter, which was to have been August 12th, because of this culture of drugs and the people who surround it on taking advantage of this situation. Patty Fairfield, who is the executive director of Nietzsche Friendship Center, which manages the shelter, says on the record that human trafficking is happening inside of this shelter. And so to Mr. Rickford, that was a concern.

You've also spoken to the people who run the shelter. And what was their response to this announcement? The people who live there were incredibly, are incredibly vulnerable, they say. And they were, and Fairfield was making a case to say, we need to leave this open. Yes, we know there's human trafficking happening here. Yes, we know there's drug dealing happening here. But if we just flush these people out into the streets, then matters will be worse for them. They will be more vulnerable. Well, now I understand that we have the Human Rights Commissioner of Ontario, Well, now I understand that we have the human rights commissioner of Ontario, Renu Mandane, saying that the shutdown was a dangerous move. And I'm wondering what kinds of things is she worried will happen now?

There are classic northern Ontario racial tensions that flare up when incidents occur. I think it's probably the easiest way to say that. And this is one of those cases. As I say, the shelter is right on a commercial strip. So the traditional areas in which intravenous drug use has been allowed to happen have been slowly eliminated, including all of those spaces. And so what you're seeing in this tourist town where people are docking their boats and coming into the farmer's market today is people leaning up as other people leaning up against buildings shooting up at 10 o'clock in the morning because there's literally no space left for them to do it. The city has taken more explicit measures to try and curb some of that drug use in the downtown. I know that you've written about these, quote, truckloads of crushed rocks being dumped in city parks.

And certainly, you know, I've heard of cities removing benches and passing legislation and even outright designing parks in an attempt to deter people from sleeping or living in public spaces. But rocks, I mean, what are these supposed to accomplish? Yeah, well, this was a decision of administration, and it's not the first time they've done it. In spaces where homeless people and or intravenous drug users have been gathering, or intravenous drug users have been gathering. They have just been cutting trees down to eliminate shade and dumping truckloads of crushed rock to make it so that you can't sit there anymore. So you've spoken to people that these rocks are meant to deter, and it's looking now like they may not have a shelter soon to go to.

And now there are rocks in one of the few places still available for them to go. What have these people had to say? How do they feel? They feel pushed out of public space, most certainly. And downtown, the writing's on the wall. I mean, there's, why can't I live here? Cuff me some land, man, is scrawled on a boarded up shop on Second Street. There's a white uh whitewashed wall just up from there that says you keep pushing us we all need to push back on it there's a sense in the streets of growing frustration that they're being blamed for a systemic failure to allow them the space they need to suffer and live with their addictions. And they don't want,

from the people I've spoken with, they don't want to be exposed to people, to tourists, for example, or business owners, any more than those people want to see somebody using drugs, intravenous drugs. Like, it's not a comfortable situation for anyone to be in. And they're frustrated that they're not getting that. They're saying, why don't we have a safe injection clinic? You mentioned local residents and businesses. I mean, how have they been responding to these measures? Local residents are very divided. The business community is more or less united in suggesting that this is endangering their profit margins. This is happening at the height of tourism season. And, of course, the pending potential closure of overnight services at the shelter is also happening at normal amount of disruption from homelessness and drug abuse that has been happening in this community for generations. And to the point, there's a restaurant that Pam Vinica owns called The Cornerstone.

And she and I used to do fundraisers for the homeless shelter when it was at the Fellowship Center. for the homeless shelter when it was at the uh when i was at the fellowship center she's been one of the most active voices saying like we okay it's got to the point where we have to do something uh and so it's it's not as if uh these are this is just a nimby affair from people who don't understand or care about the issues on the other side uh the fact that this uh that homelessness has been visible for generations in Kenora has created a community of people who are supportive of what those people are going through and attempt to be able to help those people contact services and make their lives as easy as possible for being in the difficult situations in which they live. There have been grassroots homelessness assistance and advocacy organizations that have operated out of here for well over a decade. And those voices are tempering a lot of the frustration that you're seeing from the more conservative community.

What I don't understand, my thing is, is why do we have to help people be addicts? And that's what we're doing here. We're enabling constantly. We're giving them the needles. We're giving them the cozy bed. We're giving them the food. What we're not doing is giving them help. And I just think that if you're making the choice to get help,

then we should offer the help. But if you're not making the choice to make help, no help. You've built a den of thieves. That's what you've built. Close it, get rid of it, morph it into something that is useful, that this community needs, which is a treatment center. You mentioned that this is a systemic problem. This is something that has been going on in Kenora for generations.

Even more recently, social support workers have been overwhelmed by this influx of drugs for months, long before this decision to temporarily shut down the shelter. And so I wonder what the long-term plan is in Kenora for people who are struggling with homelessness and addiction. Is there a long-term plan is in Kenora for people who are struggling with homelessness and addiction? Is there a long-term plan? Well, the short-term plan is I'm doing this interview from the basement of the library and workers at the library have panic alarms around their necks that go straight to the Ontario Provincial Police. So in the short term, that is is happening wow um and that is a situation i think we could agree uh is is something that that librarians didn't sign up for um in the in the long term um there has been meet there have been meetings uh since the beginning of august that have incorporated first nations political, health and social organizations

that is working together to attempt to reopen the shelter in the exact same place to do what it was supposed to do in the first place, which is provide those wraparound services for homeless people who need them. This is the story of so many cities across the country. Do you think that there's anything that can be learned from what's happening in Kenora that would be relevant for other communities across Canada? If we are going to do city design in a way that pushes people away from public spaces, we need to anticipate where those people are going to go. Because you're not going to displace intravenous drug users and have those people say, oh, well, I better just become a

productive member of society and go get a suit and get a job. That's not at all how anything works. And everybody knows that. The other thing that we need to understand in this situation is that this is a backdrop of Kenora not having enough low income housing. John, let's leave it there. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir. That's all for this week. FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show was produced by Matt Ama, Mark Apollonio, Chris Berube, Imogen Burchard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, Marion Warnicka, and Jackson Weaver.

Special thanks this week to Lily Martin in our London UK Bureau. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. Our executive producer this week is Kathleen Goldhar filling in for Nick McCabe-Locos. And I'm Matthew Braga. Jamie will be back on Monday. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus.

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