Downtown Moncton homeless camp dismantled
Ryan George says he's been homeless on and off for 16 years.
On Thursday, he was one of several packing up tents pitched behind between the Petitcodiac River and former Assumption Boulevard fire hall. He had stayed in the building when it served as a temporary shelter over the winter.
It closed April 1 and then tents popped up along the Riverfront Trail. This week, the city posted a notice telling the people staying there to move by noon or have their belongings thrown out or taken to a nearby shelter.
"I think it's bull, to be honest with you, we're not doing nothing, we're not doing any harm," George said in an interview just before the deadline.
"I'm sure that if there was somebody here doing something, we'd get rid of them," he said. "That's one thing we don't want - is to get kicked out of a spot."
The city says a spring trail cleanup brought about the move.
Vincent Merola, Moncton's community development officer for social inclusion, said the city has a procedure to deal with homeless tent camps. It calls for the camps to be removed if they pose a health and safety hazard or are in a public place.
He said there weren't health and safety concerns at the Assumption site but it was in a public area.
"We do need to get our spring cleanup going on here," he said. "This is a very public area, there are businesses here."
Merola said the city was there to help people relocate to shelters like Harvest House or House of Nazareth. He said both have capacity to accommodate those staying in the tents. But he acknowledged some people don't want to go to those shelters because of their rules.
George is among them.
He's stayed at Harvest House on High Street before but didn't like that it closes its doors at 9 p.m., meaning he must be inside before then.
"We're adults, we're not teenagers anymore," George said.
Cal Maskery said the shelter does close the doors, but it's a measure to ensure people aren't potentially causing problems in the neighbourhood.
"We're trying to protect our community and make it safe for our guests," he said.
He said the shelter has eased some rules and does allow people under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The shelter has capacity for about 80 people, though Maskery says it has had closer to 50 recently.
George had previously camped at a site along the west end of Main Street that the city cleared last fall, leading to a community outcry to do more to address homelessness.
The city and provincial government funded a temporary out-of-the-cold shelter at the Assumption Boulevard building. Merola said the shelter and another at the Humanity Project on St. George showed there's a need for a third permanent homeless shelter in the city.
After the temporary shelters closed, tents were set up at the Assumption site. George, 30, said up to a dozen people stayed there on warm nights.
He said they had tried to keep the site tidy, though it became messy as they prepared to move Thursday. Dog feces, signs of a campfire and litter were evident.
Ian Johnson was among those who stayed at the site.
The 39-year-old said he hit a power pole several years ago driving on the highway to Bouctouche. He was hospitalized and said he lost his home. He recovered and worked as a rooming house manager in Moncton until it closed last spring.
Then he started staying in a tent near the old Moncton High School before going to the Humanity Project's temporary out-of-the-cold shelter. After the temporary shelters closed, he found two tent flys in a dumpster he used for shelter.
Johnson didn't want to say where he planned to go next.
"It would be nice if we had somewhere to go that we could call home, but we're going to just move on to the next spot and hope to God they don't find us at least until the end of the summer," he said.
