'Nowhere else to go,' says woman at encampment decried as eyesore amid Winnipeg's crackdown
CBC
Cynthia Flett knows she'll have to move from an encampment in Winnipeg's West Broadway neighbourhood, after city workers erected signs in Mostyn Park saying camping is prohibited — but she's not sure when.
The city's new rules, which have been in effect for just over a week, prohibit encampments within 50 metres of schools, playgrounds, daycares and skating rinks, and within 30 metres of transit shelters, bridges, docks and similar public facilities.
Two encampments in the city were cleared last week, according to the city. It plans to dismantle the encampment in Mostyn Park, next to the Granite Curling Club on Granite Way, where Flett has been living since spring.
Outreach teams helped other people living in the encampment find housing or shelter, she said, and she hopes for the same help.
"I don't know when I'll get housed or when I'll get help," she told CBC on Friday.
"If they don't want me here, they just have to find me a place to go, or take me somewhere to go, [because] I have nowhere else to go."
Flett is among roughly 15 people living at the Mostyn Park site, according to Greg MacPherson, the city’s acting manager of community development.
He's not sure when the Mostyn Park encampment will be dismantled.
"The number of units that would be required for that site is fairly substantial. We want to be sure to make … those good offers [to people], and have something in hand when we visit them and ask them to move on," he said Friday.
That will require help from other levels of government, he said.
"Ultimately, we need housing and we need to address the issues that people are struggling with at these sites, and that's more complicated than we can do with a simple bylaw change … from the city."
To avoid surprises, he says the Main Street Project is the first point of contact at encampments before any enforcement is done.
"There are people who are suffering in these sites, and we're trying to approach that with as much compassion as we can."
Executive director Jamil Mahmood says Main Street Project — the city's sole contractor for homelessness outreach — has been working to find housing for people in encampments through its own programs and the provincial homelessness strategy, as well as in the private market.
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