Brockville, Ont. to construct supportive housing cabins for homeless population

An initiative from the Joint Services Committee of Leeds and Grenville will bring roughly two dozen supportive housing cabins to Brockville, Ont. later this year.

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The committee, which consists of 13 mayors from municipalities in the Leeds and Grenville region, has noticed an uptick in homelessness in rural communities.

"I can tell you as a mayor of a rural community, we do see it in our villages," said Brant Burrow, the committee chair and Mayor of Elizabethtown-Kitley, a township just outside of Brockville.

"This wasn't really a front of line issue in the city of Brockville prior to the COVID-19 pandemic," added Brockville Mayor Matt Wren.

"But coming out of that, it became very clear that our small community had a significant homelessness problem, and the numbers don't seem to be getting any better."

The supportive housing units will be built in the parking lot of the city’s former water pollution centre, located just east of downtown Brockville.

The cabins are meant to be temporary solutions for people while they work to find a permanent home, according to Wren.

"There will be staff on site to help support their needs, to work towards getting them to a more stable housing solution," he told CTV News.

There is no firm timeline on when the cabins will be ready, but officials say the goal is to have them available before the winter.

There will be roughly 24 of them.

The committee will work through a list of around 120 people in the region that qualify to live in the cabins.

"As they transition into more stable housing solutions, then those same cabins will become vacant again," said Burrow.

"Then the next cohort of people from that by name list will be housed."

The provincial government’s Homelessness Prevention Fund is funding the project.

"It's been done elsewhere in the province, and one of the reasons we're doing this is because we know that it can demonstrate success," Burrow said.