Fredericton police to track reasons some homeless people still in tents

Fredericton police chief Martin Gaudet says officers will start tracking the reasons why some people are living in tents instead of going to a homeless shelter.

It's a move Gaudet committed to during a public safety committee meeting on Thursday after councillors told him the data could help reveal whether services for homeless people need to be changed or improved.

"It would be interesting to hear what [the reasons] are," said Gaudet, after the meeting.

"If, let's say, we get the top five or the top 10 [reasons], in order to provide an ongoing dialogue with the government and other communities … well, that's how you build a safety net. That's how you build services, right?"

Homelessness is an issue cities in New Brunswick have grappled with in recent years, with non-profit organizations scrambling to set up shelter space to get people out of the cold and municipalities experimenting with solutions to the problem.

In Moncton, advocates have recently called for the creation of a "wet shelter" to serve as an overdose prevention site, and offer services to help substance users who are often turned away from the four existing shelters.

Map shows extent of problem

On Thursday, Gaudet gave members of Fredericton's public safety committee an update on the force's new action plan to address concerns from citizens and businesses around trail safety, homelessness, commercial theft and crime overall.

Part of that involved him showing a "heat map" with icons representing all the places in the city where officers have responded to calls about people living outside in tents, either by themselves or in groups, in the past two years.

The map shows officers responded to dozens of such calls all over the city, with concentrations in the downtown and uptown areas on the south side and along the trails system on the north side.

"Those are locations where … our civilian staff and officers were called to address issues with tents. That could be one tent, six tent, five tents," he said, adding that they don't include larger tent camps.

In 2021, the Fredericton Police Force allowed for sanctioned tent encampments in select areas in the city, but ended that approach in 2022 over concerns around safety.

Last year, police officers dismantled a handful of tent camps across the city in keeping with the force's break from its earlier approach.

Gaudet said when police get a call about someone living in a tent, they respond with a staff social worker to review what's going on and attempt to connect the tent-dweller with housing services.

"Some of these intakes and conversations take days to come to any level of fruition," Gaudet said. In some cases they refuse, and officers will act by forcing them to pack up their tent and move along. "And then three days later, they're somewhere else," Gaudet said.

Data could help understand 'root cause': councillor

Cassandra LeBlanc is one of the councillors who asked that the force start tracking the reasons why some people are not accessing shelters.

"You can't solve a problem without understanding the root causes," said LeBlanc, after the meeting.

"And so I think it's incredibly important for us to understand that so that we can do some advocacy at a provincial and a federal level to get better policy in place, get better services in place, and hopefully see a future where there's just less of these experiences happening in our city."

LeBlanc, who represents a ward that covers part of downtown, said she's heard anecdotes about why some people live outside.

"Although we're incredibly thankful to the shelters, it could be a difficult space to live in," she said.

She said some people who are homeless have pets or spouses that they'd have to give up or live apart from if they turned to a shelter.

Others have severe drug addiction and might prefer living outside where they can use, instead of going to a shelter and suffering the effects of withdrawal.

"I think that, you know, we really have to do a deep dive on the reasons people are choosing to live in tents instead of using our services, and just use that data to better our services," she said.

LeBlanc said there are likely other organizations and agencies that are already trying to understand why some people are living outside.

She said asking the police force to collect data on the issue could help bolster any research that's already underway.