Tents lay abandoned, clothes hang on posts and embers remain hot as the last residents of Yellowknife’s homeless encampment 51st Street await their fate.
Nine people remain at the site, as the other dozen or so there at the start of the week have found other accommodations as the nights get chillier and the territorial government’s latest deadline to vacate has come and gone.
The residents had been warned that the RCMP could show up at any time on Friday.
This comes after government officials told the public that the encampment would be dissolved this week due to the start of renovations on the neighboring Aspen Apartments.
CKLB spoke with a woman at the camp today who has been there from the start. She asked to remain anonymous.
Aspen Apartments parking lot homeless encampment Friday afternoon at deadline to leave. (Mariah Caruso/CKLB)
She said since Housing First came by the site earlier in the week, she had to dismantle her tent, pack up her belongings and sleep on a friend’s couch.
Less than a day later, she finds her self back at the camp sharing a small tent with her son and his girlfriend.
She says she’d rather be on the streets than at the women’s shelter due to safety concerns.
The territorial government on Sept. 6 established late Tuesday as a deadline to leave. That deadline was subsequently pushed back to Friday.
The portable toilets and fencing the GNWT had set up have been removed, and workers have been at the site a few times this week to start cleaning and throwing away garbage.
One week ago, a standing committee of the 20th Legislative Assembly was told that on Monday, an inter-agency encampment working group will be with the campers to ensure they have some place to go. Monday’s heavy rains delayed that response somewhat.
Those folks who have pitched a tent in the Aspen Apartments parking lot had indicated they could have been housed this summer, but declined to do so for a number of reasons.
Many told GNWT and NGO workers they have been barred from shelters for violent behavior or just didn’t want to have their lifestyles restricted. Some have difficulty finding housing as they were just released from jail, or haven’t any proper identification.
The committee heard from Great Slave MLA Kate Reid and department officials of utility thefts, open sex acts and drug deals, and public defecation, the latter mostly in the first dozen days before the GNWT provided portable toilets.
The working figure from earlier encampments has been 50 people, and CKLB counted 22 tents there one week ago, but the GNWT insisted the number is between 12 to 15 homeless campers.
The GNWT declined comment on the situation when asked by CKLB today.
– With files from James O’Connor
