In a 3-page letter to Premier Doug Ford, Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttall says the city has reached a "breaking point" due to the "growing number of homeless encampments."
The letter posted Tuesday on the mayor's Facebook page, invites the premier to visit Barrie and see the affected areas for himself.
Last week, Nuttall declared a state of emergency in the city in regards to homeless encampments.
In the letter, the mayor acknowledges homelessness is a complex issue.
"Like many municipalities across Ontario, we have been experiencing a rise in homelessness since the COVID-19 pandemic," Nuttall writes. "These encampments have resulted in health and safety issues for our community, a negative impact on the environment and damage to municipal property."
The mayor states there are 21 homeless encampments throughout the city with an estimated 650 homeless individuals. Nuttall, in his letter, goes on to say that a majority of them are not from Barrie or Simcoe County.
In the letter, Nuttall rhymes off incidents he says have occurred in Barrie in the last two months including a double homicide in an encampment on Victoria Street, an increase in tents along city streets, multiple fires being set, a tent found with drug money, drugs, multiple cross bows and a pistol, rampant drug use, and overdoses.
Nuttall also references high levels of E-coli in area streams leading from the Victoria Street encampment to beaches, human waste found in the city hall fountain, resulting in its closure, and defecation in doorways.
"We cannot face this crisis alone," Nuttall wrote in his letter. "The City of Barrie is requesting the Government of Ontario strengthen the existing system of mandatory community-based and residential mental health care, and to expand service to treat those who have severe and debilitating addictions."
The mayor suggests that because the County of Simcoe is responsible for the social services portfolio rather than Barrie, the city has not been able to manage or respond adequately to the problem of homelessness.
He also lays out for the premier what the state of emergency allows the city to do such as immediately test all waterways near or abutting encampments to understand how many waterways are being contaminated with human feces, resulting in incredibly high e-coli readings, remove encampments beginning with those that are closest to critical infrastructure and public spaces, and request the County of Simcoe to immediately open access to additional shelter throughout the county to allow for space to be available for the people living in these tents.
Two days after the mayor issued the state of emergency, an encampment of more than 20 tents was removed from the area of the courthouse on Mulcaster Street.
In an update last Friday from the county, it said outreach and HART of Simcoe County teams had engaged with 44 individuals at that encampment site, and of those, 36 had been successfully supported with accommodation and relocated to those spaces, while another eight individuals from the site declined offers of shelter spaces and chose to move out of the encampment enforcement area.
