Peterborough’s new City Council met on Monday following a weekend wherein returning Otonabee Ward Councillor, Lesley Parnell, found herself in the middle of a mild Twitter storm due to her very public dismissal of the possibility of taking action on the growing homelessness crisis in this city.

“The answer is NO,” Parnell tweeted in response to an Examiner article outlining Town Ward Councillor, Alex Bierk’s motions to move forward on a winter housing strategy which would include funding Peterborough Action for Tiny Homes (PATH) to set up ten to fifteen heated cabins on land located at 843 Park Street from January 5 - April 30, 2023, with the potential for a new drop-in centre to be set up at the former Trinity United Church.

Parnell would vote in favour of Town Ward Councillor Joy Lachica’s motion to request City Staff provide a report by the January 23, 2023 General Committee Meeting outlining “unconditional shelter, housing as a human right, ‘Housing First’ model as a potential long-term solution to eradicating homelessness in Peterborough.”

Despite his eventual support for the motion, the problem, according to newly minted Mayor Jeff Leal, is that there is “no set of common facts” - a point he did not expand upon, but which seemed to serve as a means of softening his own position concerning the crisis at hand. Leal recognized that the Council “has a responsibility to move forward in this area” in order to “give our staff the appropriate time to get a comprehensible report back to us.”

At one point in the discussion, Northcrest Ward Councillor, Dave Haacke, brought up the fact that municipalities who have implemented similar strategies have property taxes which far out-strip those of Peterborough. The implication here being that Peterborough could house everyone if only they had the tax income of some Scandinavian climes, despite very similar actions being taken in various locales across Ontario.    

The first of two motions Councillor Bierk brought forth concerned the allotment of city funds totalling $100,000 from the Social Services Reserve to develop an Emergency Winter Response and call upon city staff to develop an “ongoing Winter Respite Plan to be presented to Council by March 31, 2023.” 

This motion revisits issues and approaches that had previously been aired during an emergency meeting of the previous Council under Former-Mayor Diane Therrien which resulted in the declaration of a state of emergency on homelessness in the City of Peterborough by Therrien. At that time, approximately $200,000 had been tied up by City Staff under provisions outlining the availability of unbudgeted funds during an election period. 

As was outlined throughout the evening, the actual declaration of an emergency by the head of Council under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act doesn’t actually enable or require any special powers or action on behalf of council. 

Bierk began by acknowledging his privilege of being in this position and noted that a member of the unhoused community in their fifties had passed away the previous night. The severity of the present situation is hard to overstate and Bierk’s recognition of the immediate impacts of continual inaction set a sombre tone for the reading of his motion.

“The data is actually crystal clear,” Bierk stated as a direct response to Leal’s previous statement on Lachica’s motion. 

“We have more unhoused people than shelters,” Bierk went on to say before emphasizing the need for more barrier free shelter spaces and discounting the notion that Peterborough is a haven for the unhoused - a response to the pernicious narrative that has routinely derailed political action on the homelessness crisis and activated resentment and apathy in residents. He further explained that a mere eight percent of the unhoused population of this city report having no ties to Peterborough.

The $100,000 requested “is a drop in the bucket” Bierk added.           

The motion was eventually defeated by a vote of 6-5 with Mayor Leal, and Councillors Crawley, Baldwin, Lachica, and Bierk voting in support, leaving Councillors Vassiliadis, Beamer, Parnell, Haacke, Douguay, and Riel to vote against. 

The second of Bierk’s motions involved three resolutions including Council support for a Temporary Use By-Law and Potential Site Plan Exemption application which would see fifteen chronically homeless individuals housed in PATH-built shelters at the aforementioned site of 834 Park Street. Service for the site would be provided by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Peterborough through a memorandum of understanding with PATH. The motion also called for the waiving of development fees and the expedition of City Staff’s approval process and the immediate allocation of $100,000 for these initiatives for the 2022-23 winter season. 

Councillor Parnell began her comments on the motion by bringing up the number of “inappropriate names” she has been called over the weekend owing to her fulsome dismissal of this motion. Instead, she suggested that residents refer to her as “Mama Bear” as she would never allow the sorts of “unspeakable things” which she holds are preventing her constituents from allowing their children to play in their backyards to continue to transpire in other parts of her Ward or elsewhere in the city.

“People want less crime, less needles on their trails, and less people going through their cars and homes and sheds,” Parnell said. She then attempted to delineate between criminals and the unhoused population by saying the quiet part out loud as she stated that “it’s not that all homeless people are criminals” but rather shelters “invite criminal activity.”

The suggestion that criminal activity is an invitation-only event for those experiencing homelessness and not the direct result of a failing system that ensures continued desperation, and which Parnell willingly upholds, did not seem to register as deeply problematic, misguided, and frankly cruel. One might imagine that Parnell herself would not willingly accept an invitation to such a party should it, by some unfortunate coincidence, land at her presumably well insulated front door. 

The punchline to all this, it could be said, is that Parnell outlined that $250,000, or more than what had been requested in both of Bierk’s motions combined, had been spent erecting eight-foot fences and installing lights and security cameras. In bringing this up, Parnell was careful to mourn the loss of trees in her Ward, while remaining concerningly blasé about the loss of human life.

In later comments, Bierk warned that the rhetoric employed by Parnell is harmful and that the continued criminalization of poverty is only going to make the problem worse, not better. 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re proud of the situation that we’re in,” Bierk said to the entirety of Council. “Dealing with this by force is not working, and it’s not going to work.”

When it came time for him to speak, Mayor Leal brought up the fact that in other municipalities, specifically Fredericton, Kingston, and Kitchener, similar approaches had come after many months of careful planning and followed the prescribed planning processes set forth in those cities. 

“One of the things that we have to avoid in public policy is moving in a direction where there might be a failure,” Leal stated, somehow unironically; as if the present situation is indicative of a major success on the part of former and current Councils.  

The motion was defeated by a wide margin with only Councillors Bierk, Lachica, and Matt Crowley voting in favour. Earlier in the discussion, Crowley referred to this motion as a “no brainer” - evidently not pre-empting Leal’s notion that inaction glossed over as “planning” is the approach du jour.     

In the end, Council passed a motion brought forward by Mayor Leal which resolved to order City Staff to prepare a report in consultation with PATH on a way forward by February, 2023. Councillor Parnell was the only member of Council to vote against the motion.