Thunder Bay City Council ratifies Kam River park as site for temporary shelter village

CBC

07-05-2025

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After months of debate, city council on Monday gave its final approval to Kam River Heritage Park as the site of a new temporary shelter village.
Construction of the village, which will include about 80 mini-cabins for use as transitional housing, is expected to start in July, with the first occupants moving in, in the fall.
Council voted to approve the site at its meeting last week; that decision was ratified on Monday.
"I think all members of council struggled with the decision," Current River Coun. Andrew Foulds said Tuesday. "It was an extraordinarily difficult decision, and listening to members of council both in open and closed session, what's very clear is every member of council, and I would also extend that to our administration, cares deeply about this community."
"There is a recognition that we have a segment of our population that is really struggling and vulnerable, and all members of council want what's best and and that was evident (Monday) night."
Thunder Bay's temporary shelter village will be built at Kam River Heritage Park
17 hours ago
Duration 0:27
City administration was recommending the Kam River Heritage Park site for several reasons, including its proximity to other support services, and the fact that an encampment is already located near the park.
The city has budgeted $5.5 million for construction of the village, and $1.5 million annually for operational costs; if construction starts by July and is complete by December, the city is eligible for $2.8 million in external funding.
Now that the site has been approved and the decision ratified by council, the city will issue two requests for proposal: one for the construction of the village, and one for its operation.
"The city isn't going to be running this," Foulds said. "We will be ... looking for a third-party operator."
Carrie Anne Marshall, associate professor at Western University and director of the school's Social Justice in Mental Health Research Lab, said she has concerns with the use of mini-cabins.
"I'm deeply concerned about the proliferation of sleeping cabins across North America," she said. "There isn't enough evidence to support the use of tiny homes and sleeping cabins or particularly specifically sleeping cabins, and yet we're pouring millions of dollars into these approaches across North America."
Marshall said when it comes to mini-cabins and tiny homes, the latter is the better approach.
"Tiny homes to me are kind of like small homes that have all of the amenities of any home or an apartment, that any of us would live in," she said.
Mini-cabins, meanwhile, "don't have integrated amenities," Marshall said. "They usually have a bed, sometimes a fridge. They were insulated, often, but they're just basically a shed."
"They're often situated in villages, where there is a building where a person can access running water and cooking facilities and that sort of thing."
And they can be costly, she said.
"I think it's perceived efficiency in terms of cost, and in terms of ease of setup," Marshall said. "But when we look at the the evidence on the various communities that are being set up across North America, they're actually really quite complicated."
The villages, she said, often run into issues regarding placement, which leads to delays. But recent studies, Marshall said, also show that traditional congregate shelter models — including the use of former motels taken over by municipalities — are actually cheaper than village-style shelters.
"There's a recent community that's being established in Hamilton that has gone $5.1 million over budget," Marshall said. "It's currently costing the city of Hamilton $7.9 million to establish 80 sleeping cabins temporarily for two years."
"Then in the Kingston community, the city of Kingston dedicated $2 million to a sleeping cabin community for 15 people for a year and a half. If you kind of do the math, it's $7,407 per person per month in that year and a half, which far exceeds the cost of placing a person in permanent supportive housing."
Marshall said a housing-first approach is more effective, as it's "demonstrated effectiveness over and over again for helping people to secure housing and to keep it for longer than transitional housing."
"There's a lack of public housing that's deeply affordable, and there's almost nonexistent deeply affordable market solutions," she said. "So when a person's tenure in a temporary situation ends, there's often not enough housing available, deeply-affordable housing available for them."
"So the temporary solutions tend to become longer-term solutions, and in the meantime, we're kind of diverting funding away from those permanent supportive housing solutions in order to fund these temporary solutions."
Marshall said developing new, more-dignified shelter spaces — with a focus on safety and privacy — for people to use while waiting for permanent housing would be a better approach.
"I think there are some possibilities for working with municipalities and with organizations to create shelter spaces that are more dignified and that are actually safer for people to be in without spending a lot more money," Marshall said. "It's really just a change in organizational policy that we're talking about at that point."
"We could actually use the surplus funding to provide perhaps some permanent housing, or even temporarily some emergency shelter beds, while other housing options are becoming available."