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Residents and business owners of Old East Village made their concerns clear about a homeless shelter in their neighbourhood receiving more funding from the city.
“Old East Village has served as the waiting room for London’s most disruptive citizens for too long,” said one speaker at a public meeting on Wednesday. “It’s time to move the waiting room someplace else.”
The Ark Aid Mission shelter has been operating out of a location at the corner of Dundas Street and Elizabeth Street since it had to move from its previous downtown location. They recently received $1.8 million from the city in July, and are now asking for an additional $4.3 million. The money would go towards adding a 24/7 drop-in centre, which would include 30 overnight beds for London’s unhoused community.
Local residents and businesses, however, say enough is enough.
A public participation meeting was facilitated by the OEV Business Improvement Area and Sarah Campbell, the executive director of the Ark Aid Mission. Over 50 people showed up to the first of two meetings.
The Ark Aid Mission shelter on Dundas Street (credit: Jack Sutton).
Concerns from residents included personal safety, cleanliness, and children being exposed to drug use and paraphernalia.
“When the clients you serve throw crack pipes over my fence into my yard and my four-year-old picks up a warm crack pipe and brings it to me asking me what it is, I have a problem with that,” said Stephanie Delacelle, whose yard backs onto the shelter’s parking lot.
Delacelle made it clear that she did not want the shelter to receive any more funding.
“I do not support you, or your services,” she said. “Because it’s affecting my home and my children directly.”
Business owners shared many of the same concerns as residents, but also spoke about vandalism of their stores and employee safety.
“I am now a social worker outside of my store,” says Tara Davies, owner of Dough EV. “I didn’t sign on for that. My staff gets attacked… I agree, this is not working.”
Sarah Campbell, the shelter’s executive director listened to all the concerns, and addressed what she could.
“I think that I heard the kind of feedback that I imagined we would hear,” she said. “Because we are in relationship with our neighbours and community here in OEV.”
Campbell says she is hopeful the city will approve the money for Ark Aid.
“I won’t say confident, because you never know, but I’m very hopeful because our community is in dire need of services,” she said.
She says that she heard from community members at the meeting that the shelter needs to be more responsive and attend to local residents and business owners when they call for help.
“Because we’re doing that now on donated dollars, we may need to fundraise some more, we may need to find more resources to respond, that would be one thing.”
