Speech Against Anti-Encampment By-Law at St. Catharines City Council

Hi Mayor and Councillors, I am Saleh Waziruddin.

When people are complaining about encampments or unhoused people near them, the only positive, or “helping hand,” thing you can do is to give supports in places where you prefer unhoused people to be. Halifax and Kelowna have done this: they have portable toilets and bottled water in places where they prefer encampments.

But what you can’t do is enforcement or the “iron fist” because that means punishing people for just trying to exist. There are good reasons unhoused people go where they are going. The right to exist outweighs any disturbance or disorder or costs people are complaining about.

The proposed bylaw says shelter will be found first before enforcement. But shelter doesn’t make sense for everyone and is just a cover for cruelty. Years ago I was told by a social worker I need to move in to a shelter for a temporary gain, which would have made my situation actually so much worse, and I asked her if she knows how senseless that suggestion was because like many people she had no practical sense of what it really means.

Many women especially refuse to go into shelters because of safety.

Unhoused people are where they are because that is the best option they have. You can improve the options with supports for encampments where you prefer them. Obviously the best option is supportive affordable and social housing. But until then you should use incentives, not punishment, to get what you want.

Fines are not going to be a deterrent, especially for every day or every PART of a day counting as a new offense, because many unhoused people can’t pay these fines anyway. They’re forced out of desperation to take risks like devastating punishments from the law for just trying to live. It makes even less sense to make unhoused people pay for removing their tents, “cost recovery” as the by-law calls it.

Punishing organizations for “concurring” with violations of the proposed by-law is dystopian. It’s punishing people and groups for trying to protecting unhoused people from discrimination.

Please don’t weigh disturbance for the housed more than right to exist for the unhoused. Most of us are just a short tragedy away from being forced into losing housing, even if we don’t want to see it.

Please don’t approve any steps against removing tents or temporary shelters anywhere. Please don’t use fines and other punishment to make a hard life even harder for people who can’t pay in the first place.

Thank you.