Sandy Hill in action
Notes from the Action Sandy Hill June 24, 2024 meeting
Ralph Blaine
The first meeting of the 2024-2025 Board of Action Sandy Hill (ASH) was chaired by Acting Chair Calla Barnett and attended by seven of the 10 directors and 9 residents, including myself. The following is an overview of the discussions from the perspective of an attendee. The official minutes of ASH Board meetings are public and posted on-line at: https://ash-acs.ca/meetings-minutes/
Ottawa Police Report
The meeting focused largely on the report to ASH by Ottawa Police Acting Sergeant Paul Stam regarding the Ottawa Police Outreach project for dealing with problems mostly in the northern section of Sandy Hill and the Market area. In his preliminary remarks he noted that police resources are not effective in providing a solution to the problems arising from homelessness and drug use in these neighbourhoods; social supports are also needed.
But the police are hopeful that their proposed strategy will be effective in making residents feel safer. They propose to identify “hot spots” and increase police presence in these areas. To help in identifying such hot spots they will also ask for feedback from the community concerning criminal activity. In answer to a question about the effectiveness of this hot spot strategy, Sergeant Stam said that studies show that this approach has worked. The police hope to have a joint police/community preliminary evaluation for this effort by September. The evaluation will concentrate on, in his words, “places, people and partnerships.” There is a Sandy Hill Liaison Committee to help coordinate these efforts with the police.
The police propose what they call an “Integrated Support Effort.” This would give the police the scope to refer individuals to social services or arrest specific individuals when warranted.
Sergeant Stam said that the police force would use officers on foot to implement this program. He acknowledged that although they do not have enough officers to fully implement the plan, they will do what they can with available personnel.
In answer to a question, he acknowledged that people breaking the law (open drug use and drug trafficking on the street) should be arrested (especially the traffickers), but he pointed out that the scale of these offences is so big that it is not possible to arrest all of the offenders.
Sergeant Stam hopes police can combine street intervention (“works sometimes”) and arrest (“also works sometimes”) directed at people who have been identified as causing most of the problems. But, he repeated, to solve the wider problems we must go beyond police action and offer more social services directed to the needs of the homeless and drug-addicted population.
He also says that the problems we see on the street are accentuated by the simple fact the services for homelessness and drug addiction are concentrated in this area. So people come here from all over the country and they want to be part of the street culture.
Other items
Acting Chair Barnett reported that ASH will participate in advocacy efforts for people displaced in renovictions at 80 Stewart and other locations in Sandy Hill and invited ASH members to participate. Barnett also mentioned that a resident has reached out to ASH about problems at Centre 454 on King Edward.
ASH Treasurer Megan Reilkoff reported that the community needs to decide how to use the money in the Homestead Fund, set aside for public amenities in Sandy Hill. Some good ideas have come out of a survey of the community undertaken by ASH.
Appointment of ASH Chair
The current ASH bylaws stipulate that the directors choose one person on the board to be the chair of ASH. Since none of the current directors have expressed interest, the question was deferred to the next meeting.