GOLD: Winnipeg refuses to oust homeless camp with crime, safety issues

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After at least four visits from the fire department over the course of the previous 10 days, a City of Winnipeg clean-up crew spent Monday attending to a dangerous Mostyn Park homeless encampment.

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A statement provided by the city to The Winnipeg Sun downplayed the intervention as being “to help remove some debris left behind by a recent fire” at the site near the Granite Curling Club.

“WFPS regularly attends reported encampments to ensure public safety and conduct wellness checks,” the statement read.

However this was not after a run-of-the-mill grassfire. Nearby residents had already provided Mayor Scott Gillingham and other officials, including area councillor Sherri Rollins, with photos, videos and eyewitness accounts that public safety was under almost constant threat since the spring.

Pat McNorgan emailed Rollins about blazes and propane tank explosions that almost engulfed three apartment buildings on Balmoral overnight on Oct. 19.

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“Two huge fires last night. The first, at 0300 right next to 39 Balmoral’s fence about 10 feet from the building, was the biggest fire I’ve witnessed in my 18 years here. Many, many explosions. Had the wind been blowing from the east, it would easily have ignited 39.”

McNorgan said the second fire was “about 40 feet from the rear fence with many explosions and ignited the upper branches of the trees in the area as well as a 20 to 30 ft. circumference. I feared we’d have a forest fire and in different conditions, we would have.”

Urging the city to take preventative action, McNorgan warned, “There is going to be a very real tragedy if this is allowed to continue. 37, 39 and 41 Balmoral are at extreme risk of burning because of people camping next to apartment buildings. The danger is VERY real as we saw last night, not only from fire but shrapnel from exploding tanks.”

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Other serious concerns about the camp undermining safety in West Broadway include a thriving bicycle chop shop, rampant drug use, 40-foot extension cords thieving electricity and overflowing garbage bins making the bike lane unusable.

Reports indicate fire crews were at the site on Oct. 18, twice on Oct. 19, and again for a blaze on Oct. 26.

Yet city officials insist the risk to the public does not meet the threshold to evict the illegal camp and ensure the safety of the nearby Canada Life Daycare and apartment dwellers affected by the fires, hammering, yelling, fighting, and heaps of used needles.

“We do not disturb any active encampments unless there is an immediate risk to public safety. In this case, we were asked to remove the burned debris (by the fire department).”

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A resident on the south side of the Assiniboine River who asked not to be identified, had contacted Gillingham and Premier Wab Kinew, his Fort Rouge MLA, insisting they restore peace and safety for residents overlooking the Assiniboine. He says the city policy perpetuates the crisis.

“By cleaning up after the debris, it just makes it more attractive for tenters to move back in. We continue to spend taxpayer dollars on this rinse and repeat cycle. The Legislature grounds is very clean and tidy, yet the park across the street from the daycare has been taken over.”

According to the city statement, “We would only dismantle an encampment once it has been confirmed by support agencies and our own investigations to be abandoned. At that point, we just remove whatever materials are left behind.”

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That contradicts information on the City website about encampments, which claims “If there is a pattern of persistent behavior that is a risk to life and safety, we may direct residents to vacate the site.”

That was the basis for evicting an encampment at the same spot, exactly five years ago. And at the time, Councillor Rollins was all for it.

“They have to go,” she told CBC in 2020, adding, “The encampment has been a real disturbance for the neighbourhood,” noting criminal and unsavoury activity.

In reaching out to Rollins, McNorgan reminded her, “you must remember a few years ago when you came here to check things out. You wouldn’t go into the village and said it was unacceptable? It’s even worse now.”

Yet even though there is a persistent pattern of mayhem beyond the level that resulted in an order to vacate in 2020, the illegal camp “with banners at the park entrance basically claiming it and acting as a warning not to enter,” McNorgan told Rollins — was not removed on Monday.

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“Obviously there are some parks that are too prestigious and so it falls upon the like of our little shoe horn of a park to bear the brunt of this neighborhood destroying crisis,” McNorgan told the Sun, citing “people urinating and crapping in the bushes and Assiniboine River.

“It seems to me that the city and province are loath to do anything for the taxpayers (and voters) about the clear dangers that this situation invokes, not only from property damage and physical injury but also from peripheral harm caused by a large group of meth addicts. This of course spills out to the rest of the area in the form of violence and damage to surrounding residences,” McNorgan said.

“I think most, who do not live with this, have no idea how stressful it is, and so take the (side) of the campers. I would invite them to host the many dozens of these folks in their own backyards and neighborhoods for a few months.”

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Councillor Rollins told the Sun, “It isn’t a common perspective for me to share on encampments “it has to go.” When I say it, I mean it. It is usually when there are multiple life safety issues such as repeated fires, criminality, rape tents, injurious fires etc. etc. and when they are near children. Granite has had issues that persist.

“In my opinion, repeated fires causing injury, criminality, constitute emergent situations,” she said, but cautioned, “Cities are not supported by the courts to vacate encampments.”

— Marty Gold is a Winnipeg journalist. You can find more of his work at The Great Canadian Talk Show.

Have thoughts on what’s going on in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada or across the world? Send us a letter to the editor at wpgsun.letters@kleinmedia.ca

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