EDITORS NOTE: This story initially ran on Sept. 17.
Burlington metropolis council is dedicated to lessening the homeless disaster in Ontario.
Throughout a daily assembly of council on Tuesday, Sept. 17, councillors and mayor Marianne Meed Ward mentioned the state of homelessness in Burlington, the encircling space, and the province.
“There are 1,400 encampments across this province, and it is affecting communities big and small,” Meed Ward mentioned. “It’s rural, urban, small, large, it’s critical we address this, and the campaign is fairly simple.”
Meed Ward is a part of the Ontario Large Metropolis Mayors, which introduced final month that it’s focusing efforts in direction of serving to the homeless inhabitants in Ontario.
She added the group has acquired a number of thousand emails in the previous couple of weeks from residents throughout Ontario in assist of motion.
“We discovered there are upwards of 16 different provincial ministries that have some aspect of this issue,” Meed Ward mentioned. “We want one person to be the point person with appropriate resources and authority to drive action forward on this.”
Ward 3 councillor Rory Nissan and Ward 6 councillor Angelo Bentivegnia echoed the mayor, and thanked her for the work she and the Large Metropolis Mayors have achieved to date.
“The Association of Municipalities of Ontario obviously has worked very hard on this over the years,” Nissan mentioned. “They had a summit on homelessness last fall.”
Nissan added throughout the summit, it was mentioned that for each greenback spent housing somebody, it comparatively prices $1.41 to look after them by way of hospitals and police companies.
He continued it makes extra sense for the province to focus their efforts on housing than care from an funding perspective, and that the premier ought to cease sitting on the funds.
“Anybody looking at this would see his cabinet is now at 37 members,” Nissan mentioned. “We might say that’s too many, but is there room for one more? If we have a minister of red tape reduction, minister of sport, and minister of bail reform and auto theft, we can have a minister for homelessness to kickstart us on what I think we can all agree is a really important issue.”
No official movement or bylaws have been handed, however as a substitute all members of council voted unanimously in assist of the Clear up the Disaster Marketing campaign.
The marketing campaign asks that folks think about that it’s time for the governments of Canada and Ontario to take motion, that residents and companies are being impacted, and that there are packages in place that work already however they require extra assist.
“While we were at AMO, the buzz was we were getting a big announcement from the province about homelessness,” Nissan mentioned. “It was the number one topic people were talking about, thanks in part to the mayor. What did we get? The big announcement was they were going to pass legislation that would lead to the shutdown of safe injection sites, because they’re close to schools and parks. Where do you think those people are going to be injecting now, potentially around parks and schools.”
Extra info on the Clear up the Disaster Marketing campaign could be discovered on the marketing campaign’s web site.
