A region-run homeless encampment could soon be on the way to a neighbourhood near you.
Regional council voted unanimously on Thursday to move forward with a number of measures meant to help ease the local housing crisis including potentially launching a sanctioned and managed temporary homeless encampment similar in style to 'A Better Tent City.'
That may leave some scratching their heads given the region's ongoing court battle to clear residents from an unsanctioned homeless encampment at the corner of Weber and Victoria streets in Kitchener, but advocates do note an important distinction.
"When they say a 'managed' encampment, I guess you have to say the encampment on Victoria Street isn't exactly 'managed'," said Joe Mancini, co-founder of The Working Centre. "They have security around it and there's washrooms now but it's completely free-flowing."
Mancini went on to say that free-flowing nature does tend to mean more issues for the neighbouring community.
"But on the other hand, if you look at 'A Better Tent City', which The Working Centre was quite involved with that along with all kinds of other groups [...], we did really focus community efforts to create a 'managed' encampment," Mancini said.
The next question, with recent estimates being as many as a thousand or more people may be experiencing homelessness locally at any given time, will a new region-run encampment have any real impact on that number.
Mancini seemed to temper expectations a bit by saying the region and whoever it selects to operate the future site, wherever that may be, will have their work cut out for them.
"The idea of a managed encampment is a good one but we're not jumping to create a new one because it's a lot of work," he said.
