Unhoused Community Food Program

UPDATE: Our mobilization worked and the City Council voted to put off the eviction until March 21st.

STILL NEEDED: Food, clothes, batteries 

On January 6th, the City of Kingston 

issued eviction notices to those who reside in the encampment outside of the Integrated Care Hub (ICH) at 661 Montreal Street—giving them until January 11th at 5pm to leave, or be removed by force. The Katarokwi (Kingston) Union of Tenants (KUT) views this action by the city as a violent injustice, which will only serve to spread out the homeless population away from the ICH, therefore moving them away from the lifesaving services which the ICH staff provides. The City of Kingston stated that to compensate the eviction, 60 new shelter beds have been opened up. 

New shelter beds is good news, and it is undeniable that it came as a result of the pressure put on the city by various organizations which push for housing justice. However, these 60 beds aren’t even enough to house all those currently residing at the ICH—which according to the residents is about 75—and even if the quantity of beds was enough, many people are banned from certain shelters, cannot find shelter spaces with their partners, cannot find shelter spaces that allow pets, or cannot find shelter spaces that accommodate addiction, or mental/physical health issues. It is truly terrible to see how irrelevant these 60 beds become when we truly evaluate the situation at hand. The tents and land around them at the ICH are the only possessions that the residents have. By asking them to simply up and leave—by threat of police force—the city is in effect asking the residents to give up all of their possessions, just for a chance at getting an insufficient shelter space. In the past, the City of Kingston has offered to store these belongings temporarily, but this effort by the city utterly failed and proved to be a false promise—as one encampment resident stated, “I watched them throw it all out…they don’t care”. In solidarity with the residents of the encampment, the KUT acknowledges this action by the city as an effort of social murder—which causes unnecessary and premature death through social, political, and economic oppression—and a continuation of the colonial genocide perpetrated by the Canadian state, which operates by dispossessing and commodifying land, allowing only wealthy landowners access to it, rather than its original owners, in the case of Kinston, specifically the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat. This is not the first violent eviction perpetrated by the City of Kingston—in fact many of the residents at the ICH are victims of a prior eviction at Belle Park, and as stated by one of those residents “I laid down there [at Belle Park], I’m not laying down now…We built a community here, we all care for each other…If you [Mayor and city council] don’t want issues, don’t create issues.” 

 The KUT demands the city of Kingston provide the homeless population with a legitimate solution to help them. This solution is clear and simple: social rent-geared-to-income housing for all! The mayor has provided band aid solutions to the housing crises over his last 3 terms, and this has only caused death and despair for the working and poor people of Kingston. Shelters are not a permanent solution. People deserve safe, dignified, clean housing, which is located in close proximity to the services which keep them alive. This falls directly in line with Canada’s adoption of United Nations article 25 which constitutes housing as a human right.