The city says the structures planned for Kanata and Nepean are no longer needed as the number of asylum seekers in Ottawa has decreased.
The City of Ottawa has backed away from its contentious plan to build temporary tent-like housing for refugees in two locations in the city’s suburbs.
The plan was initially put in place to provide housing for an influx of asylum seekers the city saw in 2023, but a memo to city council and staff said the number of newcomers being housed in Ottawa’s shelters and overflow beds has decreased since.
That’s due to federal immigration policy changes from fall 2024, “as well as success in increasing the capacity in newcomer specific transitional housing,” wrote Kale Brown, the city’s interim director of housing and homelessness.
In June 2023, Ottawa saw “a significant and unprecedented increase in the number of asylum claimants accessing shelters,” and there were more than 1,000 single adult asylum seekers in the shelter system. But, “over the last six months, Ottawa has experienced sustained reductions in the number of newcomers accessing the shelter system, and there are now approximately 820 newcomers’ system wide,” Brown wrote.
Additionally, Brown said, the YMCA announced that it is no longer selling its building at 180 Argyle Ave. in Centretown, which is currently being used as transitional housing for newcomers. The city will be working with the YMCA to convert two additional unused floors for additional newcomer reception space, he said.
City staff are also looking to continue to use a federally owned building at 250 Lanark Ave. in Westboro Beach as an emergency overflow shelter. The federal government had previously indicated that building would be sold, but the prospective buyer is no longer going forward with the sale, the memo said.
Evening Update
This means there’s no need to develop two newcomer reception centres the city had previously announced last fall.
The city originally planned to put the structures in Barrhaven, but changed its proposal after community pushback there. In the new plan, one shelter would be near the Nepean Sportsplex and the other near the Eagleson Road Park and Ride in Kanata.
Now, Brown said, “the procurement process and the plans to build at these locations will not proceed.”
He said an overflow site may be required through next winter, though, as newcomers won’t be able to be moved out of community shelters, and until the city finishes purchasing “scattered units.”
Brown’s memo added that if demand changes “staff may need to stay in and/or activate other community centres as part of an emergency response.”
Between now and spring 2025, Brown said, a total of 290 new permanent beds will be added between the St. Joseph Boulevard and Queen Street Transitional Housing Programs.
“This is in addition to the additional capacity recently added at the YMCA transitional housing program, and through the expansion of scattered newcomer reception homes,” he wrote.
Brown said since the inception of the city’s Integrated Transition to Housing Strategy in 2023, the city has added 657 new permanent shelter or transitional housing beds for single adults. The city has also opened 132 new supportive housing units with another 112 under construction and 134 in predevelopment. He added that 337 people with a history of chronic homelessness were housed through supportive, community, transitional and private market housing.
More to come.
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