Internal emails show city planned to remove park encampments in April

thestar.com
July 8, 2021
Victoria Gibson

Toronto planned to clear out four major homeless encampments by the end of April, internal emails confirm -- though the city backed off an April 6 deadline given to camp occupants, saying at the time that trespass notices were only meant to “guide peoples’ decision making.”

The Star obtained the emails through a freedom of information request. They outlined the city’s initial April plan, and revealed some of the public pressure officials faced to remove the homeless camps from parks and other locations. The records also include fire risk assessments of 10 camps across the city from early May, which in most cases turned up a lack of hazards.

The emails -- from the inboxes of parks, forestry and recreation staff -- cover a 10-day period in May when the city ramped up enforcement against remaining camps.

“In the spring, work will begin to ensure the four park sites are ready and available for a variety of uses, including summer permitting and programming,” read a ‘key messages’ document that appears to have been sent between staffers on May 11, but included the April date. “In April, the sites will be cleaned and restored. Enforcement is only after everyone on-site without an inside space to sleep has been offered inside space with supports in the month of March.”

Those four sites were Lamport Stadium, which was partially cleared May 19, Trinity Bellwoods, which was cleared June 22, Alexandra Park and Moss Park. The latter two are still in place.

The city has faced scrutiny in recent weeks over its approach to encampments, particularly in the wake of the Bellwoods operation that saw hundreds of police and security officers clashing with hundreds of protesters, who opposed the displacement of some two dozen occupants.

Reached by the Star this week, the city in a statement said the reason for the change from its April enforcement plans was because it wanted to ensure it had taken all measures to “encourage people to voluntarily accept offers” in the shelter system.

In early April, shelters were struggling with hundreds of COVID-19 cases amid the pandemic’s third wave and, during this time, an outbreak halted admissions at the hotel shelter where officials aimed to house encampment occupants.

The statement did not reference the outbreak at the hotel shelter site, though the Star inquired whether that factored into the change.

The city ramped up enforcement against homeless encampments in May, conducting three sweeps of smaller camps on May 12. The internal emails show staff were facing some pressure in the preceding weeks to clear out one of those three in particular -- Barbara Hall Park.

“I am writing to demand that you close down the encampment at Barbara Hall Park,” read one email, from a sender redacted from the records. “It is currently illegal to camp in a public park, but you have gone against your own laws and allowed this to happen in our community. The difference between the public parks and our hotel, is that there are no security guards, there are no laws or rules for people to follow in this encampment. You have inflicted this on our community and on our lives,” the email continued.

Another email, also from a redacted sender, suggested the city ask the Centre for Addition and Mental Health to help provide “compassionate care,” but also called for the camp to be cleared: “In the city’s decision to ignore bylaws you are now running an outdoor shelter without food, water, and safety measures and impacting the entire community. This is your responsibility.”

The same day the two Barbara Hall complaints came in, a meeting was scheduled between acting Fire Chief Jim Jessop, parks manager Janie Romoff, and two other staffers to discuss the potential of adding new parks ambassadors to provide “intel” to help remove camp structures faster.

Asked about the outcome of that meeting, the city said it didn’t trigger extra hiring because they had already posted to hire five new part-time and seasonal ambassadors to meet “increased service requirements.” Those postings were put up in March; hiring was done last week.

Nine days after the complaints came in, Barbara Hall was cleared, with all occupants reportedly moving into shelters. Asked whether that public pressure factored into the decision to clear the park, the city said its decisions were not “complaint-based,” and that it aimed to maintain spaces where it had previously removed camps, which was done at Barbara Hall in 2020.

The emails show pressure to act on other sites, with one person complaining repeatedly about tents in Nordheimer Ravine over a year, and a security manager for a local realty alleging that an encampment occupant in Trinity Square Park had attempted to steal a patio table and umbrella.

The internal emails also include an assessment by the city’s fire service, on May 11, of 10 encampments -- from larger sites such as Trinity Bellwoods to smaller road median camps.

As the city has repeatedly pointed to fire risks as a major reason to pursue encampment clearings -- two people have died in encampment fires since last year -- the assessment shared with city staff by Roman Wojnarski, captain of the fire service’s Community Risk Reduction Unit, found no evidence of items such as propane or gasoline in eight of the 10 camp locations.

One site had one empty propane tank, which was removed, and another had one generator. “Occupant has a support person delivering gasoline as needed by topping up the generator at the site. I cautioned him about generator exhaust and CO poisoning to which he indicated he was familiar and exercised all precautions. I observed no fire hazards,” Wojnarski wrote.

The assessment was sent to numerous city and fire service staffers, as well as former councillor Jonathan Burnside -- who, the city said, moved in March to a managerial role in the deputy city manager’s office, assisting with files that include the city’s response to encampments.