Stop Building New Shelters, City Hall! There is a Better and Cheaper Way to House Newcomers
City Hall appears set to build two Sprung shelters to house asylum seekers. Using a former convent, along with scattered communal homes, would be a smarter choice.
See the recent Fix Your City article, Fix Housing 11: Asylum Seekers are the Growing Face of Homelessness in Canada, for a more in-depth analysis of how best to manage the surge in refugee claimants.
No new shelters
Asylum seekers make up about half of Ottawa’s homeless population.
The number of asylum seekers globally has skyrocketed in the past few years, with Ottawa following a similar pattern.
In our recent Fix Your City article, Catherine and I outlined how the shelter system is not well suited to accommodate the needs of asylum seekers. How communal homes scattered throughout the city are both cheaper and more effective than putting asylum seekers in shelters.
So why is the City of Ottawa considering building two new tent-based shelters to house asylum seekers?
Managing the surge in asylum seekers
During COVID, the City of Ottawa repurposed three recreation centres into physical distancing sites for existing shelters. As the city experienced a surge in refugee claimants, the three centres became the primarily shelters for those newcomers.
The City rightly wants to convert the facilities back to local community centres. To do so, the City is indicating that it would put asylum seekers in two Sprung structures.
Sprung structures are giant tents. They are a thick fabric stretched across a metal frame. Heating, cooling and running water can be serviced into a Sprung structure, much as they would be with other buildings.
You can see a Sprung tent on Carling Avenue at the Civic Hospital. It was put up as a distancing centre during COVID, and has since been repurposed for other hospital uses.
Recognizing the burden on provinces and municipalities created by asylum seekers, the federal government established an Interim Housing Assistance Program. The City of Ottawa has an application with the federal government for $105 million to house asylum seekers and help transition them into Canadian society.
While the details of the application have not been made available, the City has said that it wants to use some of the funds to establish two Sprung structures. These facilities would both house refugee claimants for a number of months, but would also serve as a reception centre that provides asylum seekers with the services they require to be successful in Canada.
Below is a photo of what the accommodation in a Sprung structure could look like.
Not the right approach
The concept of a reception centre for asylum seekers is a good one. Claimants need access to services right away. Having those services where migrants initially arrive and get processed is a good idea. But after a night or two, we should be transitioning those individuals into communal homes better integrated into the local community.
There are five main concerns with using Sprung tents to accommodate asylum seekers:
Sprung structures are shelters. Shelters are not the solution to homelessness; housing is. Shelters are a band-aid solution, and we should be looking for alternatives before increasing shelter capacity. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, in its report Ending Homelessness for People Living in Encampments in Canada, identified 18 possible solutions but only gave a lukewarm acknowledgement far down the list to “Add sprung structures: so long as there is also a wind-down strategy in place in the future”. The City of Ottawa labels these as temporary facilities but talks about them as permanent fixtures.
Sprung structures are tents. They have little insulation and would be costly to heat in the winter and cool in the summer. The exterior fabric can be easily ripped with something sharp.
Housing asylum seekers in dormitories or cubicles offers little dignity or privacy. Newcomers will probably end up staying in these tents for six months or more, if the experience of newcomers in recreation centres is indicative of what to expect. The City of Ottawa can do far better in welcoming newcomers.
Sprung structures are intended to be quick to install. But the City is only planning on having these ready for use in fall 2025. NOT in time for the 2024/25 winter.
And the City’s Sprung approach is probably more costly than other approaches. More on that below.
Communal homes work better …
There is a better way. Charities such as Matthew House, Stepstone House and Carty House have been helping refugee claimants adjust to life in Canada for many years now.
Their approach has been to use communal homes at scattered sites across the city to house newcomers until they can find their own rental accommodations. And to provide onsite the specific wrap-around services onsite that asylum seekers require: legal aid, immigration health services, employment search support, and help in applying for benefits and finding longer-term housing.
The homes provide a supportive communal living environment. Residents cook and eat together. They share in the household chores.
These organizations can rapidly scale their services up and down to meet demand. They simple rent more or fewer homes.
… and are cheaper
Matthew House has provided an estimate of the cost of housing asylum seekers in communal homes compared to shelters or motels.
As per the graphic below, communal homes cost significantly less than other solutions for housing asylum seekers.
We don’t yet know the cost per bed within a Sprung tent, but I would be very surprised if it is anywhere close to the cost per bed per month of a communal home.
City Hall may brush off concerns about cost, given that the federal government is footing the bill. Although with the Mayor’s recent comments about the dire state of our City finances, this is not the time to be needlessly overspending. There is only one taxpayer, and residents expect responsible spending from City Hall, regardless of whose money it is.
Supported with one welcome centre
The City of Ottawa recently acquired a former convent on St. Joseph Boulevard for the purpose of assisting asylum seekers and taking pressure off the three community centres that had been repurposed as emergency shelters.
This site can sleep up to 150 individuals. It is set far back from the road on 10 hectares of idyllic parkland within a forest of mature trees.
The City has asked existing charities to bid on how they would use this site for accommodating asylum seekers. This site could serve as the reception centre for all refugee claimants in Ottawa. Individuals would only need to stay there for a few nights, during which time they have their claim processed and be introduced to the services required to get integrated into Canadian society.
Following those first few nights, asylum seekers would be relocated to the communal homes scattered throughout Ottawa.
Existing community organizations that support refugee claimants can scale up and down their inventory of homes available to accommodate asylum seekers simply by renting new properties on private rental markets. The communal homes model is fully and rapidly scaleable.
Wilson Lo was right
On July 10, Councillor Lo put forward a motion at City Council to withdraw the delegated authority allowing staff to “actively advance the option of a Sprung Structure(s), or other semi-permanent facility option” to address the shelter system capacity requirements anticipated for the coming years.
His motion failed to pass at Council, with a number of Councillors calling out Lo for trying to prevent an initiative to address homelessness, given that the expected location of a Sprung facility would be in Barrhaven. Those comments were unfair.
Lo was raising legitimate concerns about whether we should be expanding the shelter system when other options are available. And whether Sprung shelters are even a desirable option for managing asylum seekers.
Four questions that Council cannot yet answer
Ottawa City Councillors should be able to answer 4 questions before allowing City staff to proceed with any Sprung structures:
Are Sprung tents really any different than other temporary homelessness shelters, other than providing the wrap-around supports required for asylum seekers? Do Sprung tests provide the dignity that refugee claimants deserve?
What is the cost per bed of a Sprung structure, and how does it compare to communal homes or existing shelters?
Why would the City create 2 new Sprung facilities when the same refugee reception experience could be achieved with the Notre Dame de la Providence building that the City acquired in July?
Why are city staff not simply scaling up the more affordable option of communal homes in scattered sites, rather than expanding the shelter system?
Until Councillors can answer these four questions, they should withdraw the delegated authority that currently would allow staff to proceed with purchasing two new Sprung structures.
Unfortunately, GEN X have a track record of spending $$ to get out of trouble. Not very good on the innovation side .