A Winnipeg homeowner says he’s tired of taking needle cleanup into his own hands after calls to 311 for help have gone unheard.
Don Goring called 311 Wednesday after garbage, shopping carts, discarded clothes and piles of used needles were dumped along the back lane shared by him and his neighbour’s College Avenue homes. He said he was told to file a report and cleanup could take several days.
He called 311 again the next day and was told there was no estimate as to when the cleanup would happen.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
A used needle on the ground of the back lane between College and Boyd avenues.
Goring, who lives near a playground and a school, said he wants to see the city move faster when vulnerable people are at risk.
“I don’t want kids to get stabbed with a needle,” he said. “Whoever takes this has got to be careful. I was shovelling needles back in there.”
The Mynarski neighbourhood has long been a dumping ground for garbage, used mattresses and other detritus, but needle waste has gotten out of control, he said, noting some of his neighbours are newcomers to Manitoba who don’t have the life experience to know how to safely dispose of needles.
“It’s scary to go out here, let’s just put it that way,” he said.
The city has received 54 needle reports to 311 this year, with 18 being needles or sharps in parks. The service received 130 reports in 2023, with 49 of those being needles or sharps in parks and 79 reports about needles in public spaces. Two were requests for needle drop boxes.
Street Connections, a wide-ranging mobile support service managed by the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, collected 130,728 needles from April 2022 to April 2023.
“Requests for Street Connections to visit private properties to pick up and dispose of needles are accommodated as much as possible,” a WRHA spokesperson said in an email Thursday.
It’s a citywide problem that disproportionately impacts the inner-city, leading councilors to seek more support for clean ups in public spaces. Daniel McIntyre Coun. Cindy Gilroy put forward a motion in February seeking a policy change that would prioritize cleaning up needles, weapons and other dangerous garbage in places where children gather.
That motion, which came out of meetings with downtown community day cares, has moved forward and the public service has been tasked with reporting back on the feasibility of changing the park staff program within 180 days.
In the meantime, Gilroy said park staff have been informally tasked with daily needle clean up in “higher-needs areas,” but funding is needed to continue the project and extend it past the summer season, when there are fewer workers.
“What I’m hoping to do is get something a little bit more formalized for the winter, and maybe even have other people like the Bear Clan, and other organizations that are doing some of this work, being coordinated in the wintertime as well,” she said Thursday.
Some of those higher-needs areas include the Central Park neighbourhood, the Furby Tot Lot, Jacob Penner Park and the Magnus Eliason Recreation Centre.
Gilroy said the problem is too large for the city to handle alone, and even with support from community organizations hosting cleanups, it’s impossible to keep up with the number of needles being tossed.
“I don’t think we have the manpower to physically, as a city, deal with the amount we’re seeing,” she said.
Another motion from Gilroy that will be going to council’s executive policy committee next week asks that the city consider revitalizing the Winnipeg Core Area Initiative, which was launched in 1981 by all three levels of government to focus on renewing Winnipeg’s inner city.
“Something as simple as needle pickups and cleanups could be something that all three levels of government could be looking at, funding organizations to help pitch in,” she said.
Providing easy disposal for needles is an aspect of harm reduction and a way to keep them off the streets, said Lauren James of the West Broadway Community Organization.
The group provides people with small sharps disposal containers that can fit in a backpack and offers to pick up the containers.
“If you expect people to dispose of needles in a safe way, you have to provide them with those sharps containers,” she said.
James said they hand out several dozen of the containers monthly.
malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca
Malak Abas
Reporter
Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.
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