The City of St. Catharines is putting money on the table to enforce its new public space by-law seeking to prevent homeless encampments near designated sites.
Roughly a month ago, St. Catharines City Council backed a motion put forward by Councillor Bill Phillips (Ward 5 – Grantham) to restrict homeless encampments from popping up near certain designated sites, including schools, playgrounds, and sports fields.
The measure had the strong support of Mayor Mat Siscoe and was ultimately backed by Council in a 10-2 vote.
In order to enforce the measure, Council asked city staff to present a business case for the funds needed to ensure the by-law is actually enforced.
That business case was presented to Councillors earlier this week. The price tag for 2025 is $646,000, while the price tag for 2026 will be upwards of $800,000, with $699,750 taken from the operating budget and $215,000 from the capital budget.
The funds will cover the cost of two by-law officers, an administrator, and two additional labourers, among other items.
Part of the funds will also be set aside to hire a company to clean up large encampments, should the need arise.
Staff told Council that they would recommend the by-law be repealed if the additional resources requested were not approved, as they did not believe the by-law would be otherwise enforceable.
Siscoe spoke out in favour of the business case prepared by city staff, arguing that the city would have to spend money on cleaning up encampments and dealing with homelessness regardless of whether the new public space by-law comes into effect.
“The reality is, the costs don’t go away,” said Siscoe. “If Council chooses not to pass this, those costs will continue to mount. We’ve seen that because we’ve had to draw back from other things we’ve tried to do to deal with the worsening problem.”
“The costs of keeping our parks clean and safe don’t disappear if we say no to this.”
Councillor Caleb Ratzlaff (Ward 4 – St. Patrick’s) was a strong opponent of the new public space by-law and voted against it late last month. He opposed the additional spending as outlined in the staff plan as well.
“We all know that this isn’t going to fix the problem – this isn’t going to fix the root causes of encampments – you need more supportive housing – Niagara needs more supportive housing – to do that,” said Ratzlaff.
Ratzlaff proposed sending the funds to Niagara Region instead to help with diversion efforts and challenge the Region to match it. He blamed the Region for a lack of spending on supportive housing.
But many of his colleagues were concerned about sending the Region what some suggested amounted to a blank cheque.
Councillor Kevin Townsend (Ward 3 – St. Georges) questioned what would happen if St. Catharines sent the Region the funds but the Region chose not to spend the money on supportive housing in St. Catharines.
“My concern is, we give the money to the Region, who is responsible for housing, and they just say ‘thank you’ and they don’t spend it,” said Townsend.
Townsend supported further pressuring the Region and more senior levels of government to do more but said that the public space by-law was necessary in the interim.
Council ultimately voted 10-2 in favour of spending the additional resources on enforcing the public space by-law.
Jay Goldberg is the Canadian Affairs Manager at the Consumer Choice Center. He previously served as the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a policy fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Jay holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
