Advocates decry 'inhumane' removal of stoves, heat from Charlottetown homeless camp

A worker begins the process of cleaning up after post-tropical storm Fiona, in Charlottetown, Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brian McInnis

CHARLOTTETOWN -

In a move advocates denounced as cruel and inhumane, police and fire officials in Charlottetown on Wednesday took cooking and heating supplies from residents of a homeless encampment in the city.

The raid has left those residents without basic survival tools as nighttime temperatures plummet, Kylee Graham with the Charlottetown Mutual Aid group said Thursday.

Officials have said they had concerns about safety hazards, such as people using appliances in closed spaces. But Graham pointed to the municipal fire marshal's comments last weekend that his team was going door to door to help residents use their generators safely.

"They weren't given that respect and consideration," Graham said in an interview about the people living in tents. "Instead of having a discussion and treating these folks like humans, they had their things taken from them. And that's just a very clear message to me of how not only the city views this vulnerable population, but how cops do and how the fire marshals do."

Officers with the Charlottetown Police Services and members of the city's fire department went to the encampment on Wednesday because they had received a complaint about safety concerns, said a city spokesperson in a statement emailed Wednesday evening on behalf of Tim Mamye, Charlottetown's acting fire chief.

The statement said officials saw "immediate hazards," including people using cooking and heating appliances in enclosed spaces.

Charlottetown Mutual Aid has been delivering food and supplies to residents across the city -- including people at the homeless encampment -- since post-tropical storm Fiona barrelled past the Island on Sept. 24 and knocked out power for most residents. When police and fire officials showed up to the encampment, Graham said her group got a call about it right away.

"These folks have all their belongings rooted through by someone they do not know," she said. "Some folks weren't even there at the time but their stuff was still rooted through and taken without them even knowing."

Graham said anywhere between 25 and 40 people are regularly spending their nights in tents in the area. The population is growing steadily as the cost of living soars amid a housing crisis, she added.

The City of Charlottetown scheduled a special meeting for Thursday evening to reconsider its earlier decision to defer a proposal for temporary housing for homeless residents. Mayor Philip Brown appealed to the provincial government in a tweet Wednesday afternoon for help for the city's homeless population.

"From now until those shelters are installed with electricity, water and sanitation, the homeless community will continue to struggle," he wrote.

Graham remains unconvinced about the city's commitment to help. "It's a nice thing to say when you're campaigning," she said of Brown's tweet, noting that he's running for re-election on Nov. 7.

When reached by telephone, Brown said he did not want to comment before Thursday's meeting.

Nouhad Mourad, who is also with Charlottetown Mutual Aid, said the disaster wrought by Fiona -- the weeks-long power outages, the downed trees and damaged homes, the eroded coastlines -- prompted people to come together and help one another.

But she said that help and that care hasn't been extended to the province's most vulnerable and marginalized residents, pointing to the increasing homeless population and their treatment Wednesday by police and fire officials.

"We can't be an island that prides itself on being hospitable and kind and helping one another when we do have a blindness to certain groups of people, largely marginalized folks," she said in an interview. "I think it really comes down to what type of community do we want? And where are we failing? The fact that we have unhoused people in the first place is a huge failure."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 13, 2022.

By Sarah Smellie in St. John's