Chatham-Kent is building 50 tiny homes due to homelessness Sarnia is not far behind

Windsor Morning9:06Sarnia and Chatham-Kent moving ahead to provide small structures for local homeless populations

Finding affordable housing continues to be a growing problem in many communities across Canada including in southwestern Ontario.

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is moving ahead with what it calls transitional cabins to try and help the issue of homelessness by putting solid roofs over more heads.

The plan will see 50 units built on Chatham'ssoutheast side,on municipally owned land on Park Street.

The path forward was cemented Monday night when council rubber stamped $3.8 million in funding.

Work is expected to start this fall and the units are expected to open in the spring around the same time funding for a local shelter will end, and is slated to close.

"We knew we had to come up with another solution to address that, because sadly the need for the shelter remains and continues to grow," Coun. Alysson Storey told CBC'sWindsor Morning.

She says homelessness has "exploded" in Chatham-Kent over the last few years and the added housing is long overdue.

"The pandemic really tipped a lot of folks who were precariously living in other places, couch surfing with friends and family, that kind of thing, into a really dire situation," Storey said.

A municipal housing official said during Monday's meeting there are currently 10 known encampments in Chatham-Kentwith around 80 people in total living in them.

Storey says there's a large visible homeless encampment in downtown Chatham that's continuing to grow.

According to Storey, their plan with the transitional cabins is to provide wraparound support for people dealing with trauma, mental health issues and addictions.

"Once they are in the cabins they're getting services and treatments from partners and municipal staff onsite. Then ideally, they will be able to move out of those shelters into more permanent housing on the spectrum."

Sarniaconsidering small homes option

On the same night Chatham-Kent approved funding to build its small transitional cabins, the City of Sarnia voted to further explore building tiny homes for similar reasons.

Coun. Anne Marie Gillis says despite existing daytime and overnight shelters in the city, more and more people are being pushed out of the housing marketand living in encampments.

Sarnia's Rainbow Park encampment continues to swell, she said.

"It has gotten to a point where people can no longer afford to live in apartments or homes because of the price of housing that has gone up so greatly," Gillistold CBC's Windsor Morning.

"We have a large congregation of people living in tents just on the perimeter of our downtown core."

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Gillis says the tiny homes idea they're exploring is to provide a creative alternative to available crowded shelters giving people their own space.

"They're not sharing walls. They're not sharing a piece of ground with someone else. They have their own space, so they have a roof over their head and a door that locks. Those two things are pivotal to success to get people off the streets."

Storey says the idea of added security and more privacy in a tiny home compared to shelters is attractive to some of the people she's heard from who are currently homeless.