A sudden loss of shelter is the same as “losing homes to fire or floods”
Kat Salmon lost a lot more than just her home when the encampment she had been living in for months in Brandon was recently torn down.
Salmon said, “They destroyed a lot of our stuff.” “My tent was ruined, and so were the poles. One of my laptops and one of the laptops of my neighbor were broken. A lot of other things were lost or broken. We don’t like it.”
Salmon has been living on the streets of Brandon for six years. He and four other people had most recently been living at a campsite near the railroad tracks by Pacific Avenue. The site was hidden behind a hill in the trees and had tarps, tents, and bags full of people’s things.
Because of safety concerns, the Canadian Pacific rail police, who patrol the railroad, took it apart on Wednesday.
A Canadian Pacific Kansas City Police (CPKC) spokesperson said Thursday that the camp was on railroad property and close to an active railroad line. Officers worked with local police and community outreach workers to get rid of it.
Salmon knows that having her camp torn down is a normal part of her life, so she always keeps her most valuable items on her. Since Wednesday, when her tent was taken down, she has already moved twice.
She said that her group tries to find quiet places to camp to “stay out of sight, out of mind.” But she said it’s hard to find a safe place to store her things and almost impossible to find cheap housing.
“We just need to find a safe place to put our stuff up.”
Setting up a new cam
Salmon is thankful to a Brandon community group that helped her group get new gear, like a tent and tarps.
Ask Auntie is a program funded by the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation that helps people in many ways. Coordinator Florence Halcrow says that the program has been trying to help people whose shelters have been taken away. She and a representative from the City of Brandon talked to the CPKC Police on Wednesday, right after Salmon’s camp and a few others were taken down, to ask that things be done differently in the future.
“The hope is for better coordination and communication before we come,” wrote Shannon Salterelli, the City of Brandon’s Community Housing and Wellness coordinator. “This way, service providers can work with residents to safely move their things off of railway property.”
At Ask Auntie, the main goal of the staff is to give clients emotional support and help them find a safe place to stay at night.
“When a person’s camp is torn down, it’s like when we lose our homes to fire or floods and have to move,” Halcrow said. “We try to give them emotional support and reassurance that they’re going to be OK.”
She also said that when a building is torn down, the people who live there are forced into an extreme survival mode because they have little money and need to replace what they have lost. This can lead to mental health crises and crime as people try to find a new place to live.
She also said that when vulnerable people are moved out of an encampment, they face even more problems.
“This is something that doesn’t come up very often when talking about homeless people,” Halcrow said. “The thing is, we’re starting to get more help from community groups that are becoming more aware of what’s going on,” he said.
Heather Bolech, who runs Brandon’s Safe and Warm Shelter, says that people whose camps were taken down will likely try to find another place to set up shelter.
She said that some people come to the shelter for other reasons, like to check in or see if they can get blankets or other things they need.
Bolech said that between 28 and 40 people slept at the shelter each night during the summer, and that 40 to 45 people came in each night to use the bathroom, get some food, and leave.
There are 41 beds in the shelter.
Housing and heat a concer
Bolech said that when encampments are taken down, people are most worried about the heat and the need for new places to live.
Many people don’t have access to coolness at some point in a 24-hour period, which hurts their mental and physical health.
Bolech said that all of these things put people in physical danger.
Halcrow says Brandon needs more housing and money to help keep people safer, especially apartments for single people and housing for people who are moving.
The number of homeless people in Brandon is growing, and the city “can’t build houses fast enough to house the people, especially single adults,” she said. Salmon works at a downtown hotel and says that her income is too high to qualify for some help, but not high enough to save up for a first month’s rent and a deposit. She wants more help for people in her financial situation so that she doesn’t have to live this way.
“It’s very annoying. I wish there were more cheap and easy-to-find places to rent.”