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 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.”

Community Centres would be used to house homeless instead, city says

Newcomers who arrive in Ottawa are currently being housed in community centres across the city, some of which have been closed for up to five years. That has put a strain on neighbourhoods that have lost access to their community rooms, ice pads, and other public amenities.

Another shortlisted location for a “welcome and stabilizing centre” as they are also branded is in Alta Vista. Dempsey Community Centre recently reopened after being closed for almost a year, but the Heron Road Community Centre remains closed with 200 people calling the arena home.

Alta Vista Coun. Marty Carr said she would be happy to have one of these structures built in her ward, and said two locations off St. Laurent have been proposed.

“There seems to be a misunderstanding over who is in these community centres. I’ve had the privilege of sharing my ward office with the Huron Road Community Centre since November. Every day that I walk through those halls I’ve seen people who have left their country with nothing but two suitcases, who have nowhere to go, who are stuck living with 40 people in a room,” said Carr. “It was so sweltering  there last week that I took my privilege and worked at home. These people don’t have that choice. So to say the conditions in a semi permanent structure are unacceptable, I wish that you could see how these people are now.”

Rideau-Vanier Councillor Staphanie Plante asked Lo and Hill if they have visited any of the current recreation centres converted into shelters and both replied no. She said the image of bunk beds piled on ice pads is “jarring” and that solutions are needed now.

Riley Brockington, the councillor from River ward, said he currently has homeless residents sleeping under the Hunt Club Bridge, in McCarthy Woods, and the Carlington Forest.

“The sprung structure is definitely a step up. It’s not ideal, we want to be aiming for something better, but when you’re in a crisis it requires you to think of multiple options,” he said.

All councillors agreed part of the blame needs to go on the federal government which has allowed for an influx of migrants to enter the country without any real support in place. The Ottawa Mission said that a surge in migrants created “significant impacts on frontline and emergency services, meal services, clothing room operations, and other shelter programs,” a recently published report read.

A $105-million funding request has been submitted to the federal government to pay for the sprung facility, which includes $32.6 million to cover capital costs.

The city said if the tent-like structures or another solution is not found soon, it would most likely mean the closure of community centres in other neighbourhoods to keep up with the demand.

The top three locations were shortlisted from a bigger list of 94 across the city and then narrowed down to 10. Lo said the third location is in Orleans. In May councillors asked to see the detailed list to get a better sense over the rationale and scoring process for staff recommendations. At the time of publication it had still not been released.

Barrhaven residents have raised concerns over the pressures the community is already facing. Schools are overcrowded, transit is unreliable, crime is on the rise, and the neighbourhood is often seen as far from the rest of the city. Hill said he believes the report will address all those questions.

“I welcome the scoring metrics that the city staff are working on in order to identify how they are going to work down the top 10 steps,” he said. “We will get that and I do believe that due diligence will be applied to that analysis to see what is the right fit, the right type of community to support asylum seekers.”