Canadian Press
A significant increase in the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Canada has prompted some cities to start building temporary housing for new arrivals.
The city of Ottawa is working to establish what’s known as a sprung structure that serves as both a temporary shelter and a centre to provide settlement services such as language training and employment assistance.
Peel region in the Greater Toronto Area opened a similar facility earlier this month to address the same issues.
The Mississauga centre is based in a former four-storey office park, which the Peel region signed a 10-year-lease on earlier this year to act as a refugee reception centre.
The first floor is currently the only one that’s open, and Hart said it now has 88 beds.
Construction is nearing completion on the remainder of the building and is expected to be fully open early next year.
These centres are meant to house refugees only for their first few weeks in the city before they move on to more suitable housing in Ottawa’s settlement infrastructure.
The city has identified two potential locations for these centres in the west end. Planning documents describe them as “modular tension fabric buildings.”
The planned locations for these structures have been a point of tension in the affected neighbourhoods. The city’s first proposed location was cancelled following significant resident pushback. It then came up with two new options, and rallies were held in both spots last weekend both for and against the idea of putting the structures there.
One is a parcel of land owned by the federal government near the Nepean Sportsplex, according to city data. The other is near a public transit park and ride lot in Kanata.
City Councillor Sean Devine, whose ward includes the sportsplex site, said residents have a lot to say about the issue.
“A lot of it is coming from the fact that it would have been preferable if the city of Ottawa had communicated the information sooner, perhaps in advance of the recommendations,” he said in an interview.
Devine said Ottawa has seen a spike in the amount of refugees coming to the capital in the last two years. This aligns with national trends in both refugee and asylum seeker rates.
The new structures will be funded through the federal interim housing assistance program, through which municipalities and provinces can bill the feds for costs incurred for temporarily housing asylum claimants.
Just over $1 billion has been distributed since 2017, primarily in Ontario and Quebec, with the city of Ottawa receiving $105 million so far.
With the planned opening for these welcome centres about a year away, MP Jenna Sudds questions the use of a sprung structure, instead wanting to see a facility that can offer a more “dignified” start in Ottawa.
“We’re a city of a million people. We have always welcomed newcomers to our city using different ways and methods, and I think we need to put the challenge out to our city, to the people who live in this city on how we accommodate and set these folks up for success because I have no doubt that we would get some fabulous suggestions,” she said.
The response from Sudds caught Devine by surprise, as he said the city is working “hand-in-hand” with the federal government on these plans.
“The city of Ottawa is working resolutely to implement effective solutions to an urgent crisis in a timely matter, and the best thing that our federal partners can do is provide the resources and support we need,” he said.
The Ottawa city planning document references similar sprung structures being used in California and Oregon. They are not entirely new to Ottawa either, as the Ottawa Hospital currently uses a sprung structure to accommodate overflow with their emergency response centre.
“If in a few years there is no longer a need then they could be repurposed to fill some other need. They could be relocated to serve a different kind of recreational need somewhere else,” Devine said.