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Weeks ago, a city councillor coolly made a prediction to me on a hot topic.
The Salvation Army proposal for a social service complex on Montreal Road would easily be approved by Ottawa’s planning committee, then sail through city council.
So far, he’s money. How could he know? Well, the mayor was on board, he said, a couple of leading committee members had signalled their support, planning staff were on-side and there were enough positive aspects to the $50-million plan — especially in some other buddy’s ward — to make a “yes” vote politically defensible. (And he isn’t even on the committee, which speaks to what common knowledge this was at city hall.)
So, 170 delegations aside, this goose may have been well and truly cooked ages ago. “Disgusting,” ward councillor Mathieu Fleury labelled the politics. Meh, maybe. But it’s the old thing about democracy — a horrible system except when compared to all the others.
(One wonders whether the Laurier Avenue palace is Jim Watson’s world and the rest just live in it, obediently, but this is a question better taken up by others.)
It was an important week, really, with some valuable lessons.
Firstly, planning committee, with its narrow look at land-use and focus on niggly rules, is not the best venue for a debate on the long-term future of Ottawa’s homeless shelters — though for this specific case, it was the only one.
What, for instance, do we do if the Shepherds of Good Hope needs to expand or move, or the Ottawa Mission, in the same place since 1911? Go through the same exercise, with a couple of faith-based organizations in the driver’s seat, while a good chunk of revenue comes from city taxpayers?
The city paid $13.5 million to emergency shelter operators in 2016. What control, what public input, is earned in exchange?
Look at the Shepherds. It started, literally, with a pot of hot soup and some helping hands working out of St. Brigid’s Church in 1983. Now it has a 254-bed shelter, five supportive housing locations and in the area of 200 employees. Client-beds surpassed 81,000 nights in 2016, with the city contributing some $6.5 million.
This, weirdly, is the state’s position with regard to housing the most vulnerable, those sleeping on the street: Let someone else do it. Is it any wonder, all these years later, that faith-based groups will exert their own muscle, in ways maybe not aligned with public wishes? Have we not, in effect, abdicated leadership? This is hardly how public policy should evolve.
Coun. Tobi Nussbaum, for one, urged the committee to take a deep breath and have a wider look at a complicated issue. Why not appoint a task force with all the important stakeholders, give them a tight deadline of 100 days, and have the whole works come back with some better ideas about what, with other governments, we are trying to accomplish, when and where?
What about our National Housing Strategy, set to be unveiled this week? What about the city’s own Housing and Homelessness Plan, which commits to ending chronic homelessness by 2024? What about Ontario’s effort? What about a deeper dive into Housing First, promoted as the better model?
“There was an unwillingness to think more creatively,” Coun. Nussbaum said Monday, noting that even the homeless sector is divided on the Salvation Army plan.
His motion lost 7 to 2, which speaks volumes about wanting to grasp the big picture. So the committee was stuck with the old question — Where do we put “them” — instead of the right one: How do we stop homelessness?
The other clear theme from last week’s deliberations is what you might call Vanier’s “pride of place.” There are a good many people who have done much to make it a better place to live, for generations. It is, after all, one of the last affordable areas inside the Greenbelt. So young families and professionals are financially and emotionally invested.
“We saw a community passionate but in anguish,” Coun. Nussbaum said, “to an extent I have not seen on my three years on council.”
The creation and struggle of SOS Vanier has surely been a community-building exercise. There must be a way to harness this energy in other positive directions.
And it leaves one with optimism. The Salvation Army’s 350-bed hostel and transitional housing complex will not destroy Vanier. It’s too strong a community, too life-hardened over time, for that to happen.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
The Salvation Army proposal for a social service complex on Montreal Road would easily be approved by Ottawa’s planning committee, then sail through city council.
So far, he’s money. How could he know? Well, the mayor was on board, he said, a couple of leading committee members had signalled their support, planning staff were on-side and there were enough positive aspects to the $50-million plan — especially in some other buddy’s ward — to make a “yes” vote politically defensible. (And he isn’t even on the committee, which speaks to what common knowledge this was at city hall.)
So, 170 delegations aside, this goose may have been well and truly cooked ages ago. “Disgusting,” ward councillor Mathieu Fleury labelled the politics. Meh, maybe. But it’s the old thing about democracy — a horrible system except when compared to all the others.
(One wonders whether the Laurier Avenue palace is Jim Watson’s world and the rest just live in it, obediently, but this is a question better taken up by others.)
It was an important week, really, with some valuable lessons.
Firstly, planning committee, with its narrow look at land-use and focus on niggly rules, is not the best venue for a debate on the long-term future of Ottawa’s homeless shelters — though for this specific case, it was the only one.
What, for instance, do we do if the Shepherds of Good Hope needs to expand or move, or the Ottawa Mission, in the same place since 1911? Go through the same exercise, with a couple of faith-based organizations in the driver’s seat, while a good chunk of revenue comes from city taxpayers?
The city paid $13.5 million to emergency shelter operators in 2016. What control, what public input, is earned in exchange?
Look at the Shepherds. It started, literally, with a pot of hot soup and some helping hands working out of St. Brigid’s Church in 1983. Now it has a 254-bed shelter, five supportive housing locations and in the area of 200 employees. Client-beds surpassed 81,000 nights in 2016, with the city contributing some $6.5 million.
This, weirdly, is the state’s position with regard to housing the most vulnerable, those sleeping on the street: Let someone else do it. Is it any wonder, all these years later, that faith-based groups will exert their own muscle, in ways maybe not aligned with public wishes? Have we not, in effect, abdicated leadership? This is hardly how public policy should evolve.
Coun. Tobi Nussbaum, for one, urged the committee to take a deep breath and have a wider look at a complicated issue. Why not appoint a task force with all the important stakeholders, give them a tight deadline of 100 days, and have the whole works come back with some better ideas about what, with other governments, we are trying to accomplish, when and where?
What about our National Housing Strategy, set to be unveiled this week? What about the city’s own Housing and Homelessness Plan, which commits to ending chronic homelessness by 2024? What about Ontario’s effort? What about a deeper dive into Housing First, promoted as the better model?
“There was an unwillingness to think more creatively,” Coun. Nussbaum said Monday, noting that even the homeless sector is divided on the Salvation Army plan.
His motion lost 7 to 2, which speaks volumes about wanting to grasp the big picture. So the committee was stuck with the old question — Where do we put “them” — instead of the right one: How do we stop homelessness?
The other clear theme from last week’s deliberations is what you might call Vanier’s “pride of place.” There are a good many people who have done much to make it a better place to live, for generations. It is, after all, one of the last affordable areas inside the Greenbelt. So young families and professionals are financially and emotionally invested.
“We saw a community passionate but in anguish,” Coun. Nussbaum said, “to an extent I have not seen on my three years on council.”
The creation and struggle of SOS Vanier has surely been a community-building exercise. There must be a way to harness this energy in other positive directions.
And it leaves one with optimism. The Salvation Army’s 350-bed hostel and transitional housing complex will not destroy Vanier. It’s too strong a community, too life-hardened over time, for that to happen.
To contact Kelly Egan, please call 613-726-5896 or email kegan@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/kellyegancolumn
查看原文...
