How Ottawa mayoral candidates would tackle homelessness

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In response to Sutcliffe’s plan, mayoral candidate Neil Saravanamuttoo said status quo had failed for the past four years and the city needed a different approach moving forward.

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“Mark Sutcliffe has shown that he is the type of politician who will say anything to get re-elected. Now he’s promising to end homelessness, but with no date or no real plan other than to ‘supercharge’ existing efforts,” Saravanamuttoo said.

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“Sutcliffe is making long-term promises on homelessness, but with no date or money. I don’t think many people will have much confidence in that approach.”

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Neil Saravanamuttoo, a candidate for Ottawa mayor in this fall’s municipal election. Photo by Jean Levac /POSTMEDIA

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Last week, Saravanamuttoo unveiled his own plans for short-, medium- and long-term solutions to homelessness.

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Key to those plans are actions to get people off the streets right away, he said, including creating new tiny homes, which he said was working well in Gatineau, and providing more day programs to help those living on the street develop skills and be better protected from extreme weather.

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One of the short-term, practical actions that he said would improve conditions immediately would be to expand Ottawa’s Alternative Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR) program, something Saravanamuttoo helped launch while on the board of the Centretown Community Health Centre.

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ANCHOR sends trained mental health professionals instead of police officers to non-violent mental health and addiction calls.

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Other short-term actions Saravanamuttoo would take include providing same-day access to detox and recovery beds for people ready to seek treatment, deploying rapid-response cleanup teams for needles, garbage and biohazards, scaling up mobile health clinics in areas with high levels of homelessness, and providing additional daytime programs, including warming and cooling centres.

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“These measures will not end homelessness, but they will have an immediate improvement to reduce disorder, improve public health and help more people begin rebuilding their lives,” Saravanamuttoo’s platform reads.

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His medium-term plan includes a focus on transitional housing and his long-term plan would focus on creating more subsidized social housing.

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Mayoral candidate Alex Lawson said on Sept. 9 he planned to announce his full policy on addressing homelessness in the coming weeks, but he cast doubt on Sutcliffe’s ability to follow through on his most recent promise.

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Ottawa mayoral candidate Alex Lawson. Photo by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA

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“Nobody believes Mark Sutcliffe is capable of ending homelessness,” Lawson said. “If he showed any signs of being capable of this in the last four years, I’d be knocking on doors for him instead of running against him.”

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Lawson pointed to his campaign’s current housing policy to “stop the slide into homelessness.” This plan outlined five specific actions he would take in his first year to combat Ottawa’s housing issues.

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First, he said, he would cut development charges in half for one year to help incentivize builders to increase the housing supply quickly.

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The second action he’d take is that, “if the market doesn’t deliver, I will.”

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“If after 12 months the industry isn’t well on its way to building the family-sized rental supply Ottawa needs, the city will step in directly. Public land. Public financing partners. A shovel-ready package that stops waiting and starts building,” his platform reads.

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He also said he’d do a top-to-bottom review of shelter operations in Ottawa, support the community organizations that are “doing the work,” such as the Alliance to End Homelessness, Shepherds of Good Hope, and the Youth Services Bureau, and “bring a delivery plan to every partnership” with higher levels of government.