People familiar with the situation say the closure of a troubled Albert Street lodging house has led to displaced people setting up camp in one of the Sault’s most vulnerable neighborhoods
The Compassion Hub has become a hotbed of activity since a number of people set up camp on the corner of Gore Street and Albert Street East over the summer.
That camp was lifted Thursday as the Sault Ste. Marie Police Department — along with social services, community, paramedics and the city’s public works department — are engaged in what is being called a “cleanup” of the encampment, citing “growing public safety and health concerns for area residents and those in the camp” in a news release issued after the much-publicized removal.
“They come to eat every day, they come for a lot of different things,” said Donna DeSimon, president of Addiction and Mental Health Advocates, the group responsible for the Compassion Hub on Gore Street. “We are trying to find them housing. We have people working with them that come. We have different counselors come in and see them.
“They’re here all the time.”
The regular Sunday dinners hosted by DeSimon’s grassroots group have seen more and more people turn up for meals over the past few weeks as a result of the camp.
Last Sunday, the food ran out in just 40 minutes.
“We can’t deal with it now. We just can’t,” DeSimon said of the Compassion Hub food drive. “It’s almost impossible.”
DeSimon says the closing of the apartment building at 314 Albert Street East last month ultimately led to the creation of the camp at the corner of Gore and Albert.
The property was the subject of an exclusive SooToday post earlier this year, revealing that Jim Brogno — the operator of a numbered company listed as the property’s owner — was hit with $120,000 in fines last February for various violations of the Ontario Fire Code. related to the building. The province’s local infringement office confirmed that Bronho’s company has not yet paid the fines.
According to an inspection order attached to the front of the Albert Street structure, the property presents “serious life safety issues” due to severe damage to natural gas-fired hot water tanks and severely damaged or removed copper cables and pipes.
Another order instructed property owner Jim Brogno to secure the vacant building after a July 12 inspection of the property by a city official.
A note on the front of the building also indicates that an Ontario Assistant Fire Marshal entered the property on July 22 with utility providers, in accordance with the Fire Prevention and Protection Act, to cut off due power, water and natural gas for “open end and live wiring, ventilation of natural gas appliances in the structure, and constant pouring of water throughout the structure.”
Addiction and mental health advocates are busy dealing with the “consequences” of displacing people living in the shelter, DeSimon says.
“When they closed the building…there are people we hadn’t seen before that we’re seeing now,” DeSimon said. “It just tells you there’s more on the street now than there used to be.”
That influx of people to the corner, she adds, has also stopped addiction and mental health advocates from moving into its new location — the former site of the Neighborhood Resource Center, a drop-in center on Gore Street that closed permanently in 2020 due to violence, theft, open drug use and problems with the building itself.
“Now what happened since they were across the street at the corner, unfortunately, they broke into the resource center … and they were squatting there,” DeSimon said. “There was even a tent on the roof.
“We were supposed to move across the street — we were going to take over the resource center, but it’s been destroyed. There were squatters there, they must have taken out a pipe. So it won’t be ready. We were supposed to move in at the end of this month. Now we can’t.”
Saul State District Chief Executive Officer. Marie Board of Social Services says an outreach team visits the site daily to advise people camping at the corner of Gore and Albert about the services available to them. This includes encouraging them to move into shelters at Verdi Hall and Pauline’s Place. They are also encouraged to engage with services and complete the homeless waiting list application to secure stable housing.
“We can’t dictate whether people participate in the services or not,” Mike Nadeau said, speaking to SooToday on Friday. “Our job as a social service agency is to make sure community members are aware of what services are available to them.”
Three years ago, the men’s shelter had 14 beds. Now, Nadeau says, there are 40 beds.
But demand continues to grow.
“There’s a lot of pressure on the shelter system right now,” he said.
In a survey of people in the camp, social services found that not all people living there were homeless.
“We found that about 50 percent of people actually had somewhere to go. It could have been a friend’s place, it could have been a co-housing or some other place – but not all of them were classified as homeless,” Nadeau said.
The chief executive of social services says demand for affordable housing in Sault is “unparalleled”.
“Supply is going down – there was a lot of investment outside the city and we were told some of these properties were empty. There is a tremendous need for affordable housing in our community,” Nadeau said. “There is a strategy that we are trying to develop, but we also need support. Our healthcare partners are great partners, but they need additional resources to provide this support.
Ward 2 Councilor and Social Services Board Chair Luke Dufour says removing the camp, which was in his district, was never intended to be a decision in the first place.
“I think it’s really important when things like this happen to you to acknowledge to the community that what happened was not a decision,” Dufour said, speaking with SooToday on Friday. “We have systemic problems in Sault Ste. Marie with the availability of the necessary mental health services, supportive housing, very affordable housing – those are the solutions to these problems.”
Dufour agrees that most of the people who spend their days at the corner of Gore and Albert used to live at 314 Albert Street East before it closed in June.
“It’s kind of a window into an ecosystem of problems that we see on the streets of Sault Ste. Marie – people live in deeply substandard, unsafe and unsanitary buildings,” he said.
Dufour says social services stationed its homelessness prevention team at 314 Albert Street East, which was on hand until the people living there were displaced.
The homelessness prevention team then tracked the group of people — DeSimon estimates there are close to 40 people living in the Albert Street lodging — to the corner of Gore and Albert.
“It’s a real challenge, so when you see things like the big picture of public works removing things for health and safety reasons, it’s easy to put all the things in the background,” Dufour said.
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