Barring some dramatic new development, it appears the debate over the future of Brockville’s Co-Operative Care Centre will end, in the words of T.S. Eliot, not with a bang but a whimper. (It’s been years since I’ve been blogging here, so forgive me a 100-year-old, admittedly overused literary allusion.)
My colleague informs me there were only a few people in the gallery Thursday as the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville’s council, far from backing the joint services committee’s recommendation to extend funding for the emergency homeless shelter, voted nearly unanimously to stick with its initial plan and turn off the taps on December 31.
The outcry following council’s initial decision culminated in a protest outside counties council on Nov. 4, resulting in that razor-thin joint services vote to recommend funding for the shelter through next March.
Close though the vote was, it seemed like a reasonable middle position in what counties officials might have called a contest of the head versus the heart.
The view from Central Avenue is that the Co-Operative Care Centre is too expensive a use of those provincial Homelessness Prevention Program dollars, and other methods, including the new shelter beds across County Road 2 and the HART Hub, are better options for helping people in distress.
The view from outside the counties building had more to do with the visceral image of a homeless shelter closing in the middle of December – in a year when we’ve been blessed with early winter conditions.
So you fund the shelter till next spring, which goes a long way to easing that visceral reaction, and discuss the numbers again.
Even this compromise could no longer fly with most mayors following a closed-door discussion about financial matters, information that, Elizabethtown-Kitley Mayor Brant Burrow later suggested, would have flipped the joint services vote the other way.
There is plenty we do not know right now, and it’s the kind of stuff that sealed the shelter’s fate in the eyes of the county government.
What remains now is one cold hard test. Because in covering this story I have heard plenty of warnings, from people on the ground rather than behind desks, that the closure of the Co-Operative Care Centre will result in more people on the street, and in some cases the outcome will be the worst possible one.
If counties officials want us to believe closing a warming centre at the end of December is a logical move, one that won’t result in those outcomes because there are better options around, we need to see a robust verification system in place. Though logistically difficult, that means tracking the shelter’s current users to ensure they make it to one of those new options.
Trust, but verify. And let’s hope the data we start getting in January doesn’t come from the police files, or a coroner’s report.
Comments