'There is too much violence down here – and drugs,' panhandler Kevin Aubin says of Bank Street, the commercial strip in downtown Ottawa that leads to Parliament Hill.
From a downtown Ottawa sidewalk, Kevin Aubin has been watching what he describes as alarming changes in the city’s downtown, several blocks south of Parliament Hill.
The veteran panhandler says that he is seeing an influx of troubling newcomers on Bank Street in Ottawa’s core, a main street similar to downtown areas of Granville Street in Vancouver, Yonge Street in Toronto or Water Street in St. John’s.
He’s seeing people injecting drugs, openly using crack cocaine and meth, causing trouble and sometimes hassling him as he sits on the pavement in a spot he has favoured for a dozen years.
“There is too much violence down here – and drugs,” says 47-year-old Mr. Aubin, who on a good day makes about $60 from strangers passing by his spot. When confrontations arise, he says he stands his ground. “I just tell them to keep walking.”
Mr. Aubin deals every day with what many Ottawans are concerned about – the growing numbers of unhoused people and drug users in the core of the country’s capital, on the doorstep of the House of Commons, the Senate and other fixtures of the Parliament Hill precinct.
This tent dweller has set up outside the Bank of Canada Museum on Bank Street.
Despite its concentration of political power, Canada’s capital is not immune to issues of homelessness facing other cities and towns.
About a 10-minute walk north of Mr. Aubin’s favoured spot, a man sits in a tent on the Bank Street sidewalk beside the Bank of Canada museum, across the street from the venerable Confederation Building that houses the offices of cabinet ministers and MPs. He refuses to answer a reporter’s questions, but says no one from the building across the street has ever bothered him or asked him to leave his spot.
Ottawa is a big city, the result of a 2001 amalgamation of 11 area municipalities with classic Ottawa. It is home to about one million people, the second-most populous city in Ontario after Toronto.
The Centretown area in the city’s downtown core is home to about 25,000 people, and includes the homes of many of Canada’s MPs and senators while working in the capital.
While officials say homelessness has increased across the city, there has also been criticism that intensified policing in Ottawa’s ByWard Market entertainment and historic district, east of Parliament Hill, that has pushed homeless people and visible disorder west into Centretown and Bank Street.
Homelessness in Centretown is a top concern for local residents, says city councillor Ariel Troster, whose ward includes this neighbourhood.
City councillor Ariel Troster, whose Somerset ward includes Centretown, says she returned from vacation earlier this summer to complaints from constituents in the area.
“All of a sudden, large groups of people who our social-services agencies hadn’t necessarily interacted with before were coming over from the [ByWard] market,” she says. “I’ve had business owners tell me they have spoken to some of these folks who say they have moved from the market because the police are hassling them.”
“Public drug use is the No. 1 issue I am hearing about in my neighbourhood.”
She says she rejects the Canada-is-broken narrative of federal Conservatives, but adds the city is facing a perfect storm of challenges: an influx of newcomers, a lack of affordable housing and a need for serious investment in housing.
Brenda Knight, a member of the board of the Centretown Community Association, says while homelessness has long been a reality of the area, her organization has been getting complaints from residents concerned about the presence of needles from drug use and people using compost bins for their possessions. People are sleeping in the planters near her condo, which is about three blocks from Parliament Hill.
“People are going, `What’s going on?” she says.
The city estimates that homelessness across Ottawa has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but newcomers making up a larger share of the people in shelters.
Kale Brown, the city’s program manager for homelessness programs, has an answer to that. He says the city is facing record high numbers of people who are unhoused, noting that Ottawa’s status as Canada’s capital is no protection from these challenges.
“Ottawa is not unique as a major city in Canada,” Mr. Brown says.
As of early this month, there were 2,916 people experiencing homelessness across the city, says Mr. Brown, referring to municipal data. In addition, 345 people are living unsheltered and not accessing shelter services, which Mr. Brown also says is a record for the city – last year the number was 300.
Mr. Brown says the situation is being driven by an influx of newcomers, a mix of new Canadians and people from elsewhere in Ontario and the rest of Canada, who are arriving to a city with a lack of affordable housing and an addiction and mental-health crisis.
In the year before the pandemic, 10 to 15 per cent of people in the single shelter system would be newcomers. Now, Mr. Brown says it’s over 50 per cent across the shelter system.
“This has created a unique pressure,” he says.
Peter St-Jean, a block leader with Ottawa Inner City Health Inc., checks in on fellow unhoused people in the Byward Market, a popular spot for tourism and night life east of Parliament Hill.
Peter St-Jean, 63, has been living in a shelter, sharing a room downtown, since he contracted COVID in January, was unable to pay his rent and lost his apartment. It was an unexpected turn of events for the former self-employed IT contractor.
Mr. St-Jean has been involved in a community block-leader program that has unhoused people help others in the same predicament in the ByWard market area.
He is skeptical about the suggestion that people are being forced from the market to Centretown. He says people just migrate back and forth.
“I don’t see anything different than here,” says Mr. St-Jean, who adds he is trying to figure out how to acquire housing and get back to work.
“We see so many people every day. It’s hard to know from where.”
Ottawa Police Inspector Jeff LeBlanc, who presides over neighbourhood and community policing in the city’s central district, says complaints about street disorder are consistent across the Ottawa core, with spikes during the warm weather of the late summer.
“The general consensus is that something has to be done in downtown Ottawa in general, to make people and business owners and workers and visitors feel safer, and we’re trying to address that,” he says.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe acknowledges Ottawa's challenges with homelessness and is calling on other levels of government to help.
Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe says the city is working to address the issues.
“Like many large cities in Canada, our downtown continues to face challenges, including public disorder, which have been a concern for residents and businesses alike, particularly in the ByWard Market and Ottawa Centre including Bank Street,” Mr. Sutcliffe says in a statement issued by his office, responding to questions from The Globe and Mail.
He says that other levels of government need to help.
Since August, Mr. Sutcliffe has been making the case for Ottawa to receive more money from the province and federal governments, saying the city is facing financial challenges linked to its status as the country’s capital. He says the decisions of the federal government have more impact on Ottawa than any other Canadian city.
Mr. Brown says his office is working on a strategy that includes better supports for newcomers who arrive in Ottawa. The city is seeking $1.9-million in funding from Ontario’s Solicitor-General to provide services to those on the street and in visible distress.
Back on Bank Street, Mr. Aubin, who lives in government housing and receives income assistance, says he regularly sees agitated and aggressive people who need help.
“Get them into homes or rehab centres or something like that. I don’t like seeing people out here doing what they’re doing. It’s ruining their lives.”
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Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the population of Ottawa is 1.4 million. It is one million. This version has been updated.