Bancroft Mayor Paul Jenkins says the Town continues to explore ways to support the unhoused, but states there’s no “definitive” plan in place for an overnight shelter this winter.
Jenkins met with Hastings County’s new Community Services Director on Wednesday.
He learned that a mobile shelter that can travel to Bancroft is available, but the town must find land, ideally provincial government-owned land, to put it on.
That he said, is proving to be a challenge.
“We haven’t had a great deal of luck with the province of Ontario to try and get some land, so we’re still working on that,” he says. “As far as we know, the building is still available in Belleville. It requires a location because you don’t just pick it up and move it at will. Once you pick it up, you have to find a spot where it’s going to sit.”
He said the Town’s focusing on finding provincial land, because Bancroft, as a municipality, doesn’t own much land.
He also says it’s too tough to negotiate the placing of the shelter on privately-owned land.
Cold weather arrives, homeless population remains
About 25 people in Bancroft are sleeping outdoors, in temperatures that are now, on most nights, below freezing.
That’s the best guess from Jani Kali, Executive Director of North Hastings Community Trust, an organization that works closely with the unhoused.
Kali says people experiencing homelessness are always at risk, but the risk increases as the weather gets colder.
She encourages community members to be kind to those who don’t have roofs over their heads and put pressure on governments to address homelessness.
“There are people living outside all over the place and there is really no sanctuary for them,” she says. “It’s yet another winter and we’ve been advocating, for quite a while, for a 24/7 shelter with support.”
Kali says the emergency overnight shelter that was set up by the Trust last January will “absolutely not” be set up again this year, as the Trust is not equipped to handle that task.
