City of Greater Sudbury hires consultant to tackle homelessness

The city of Greater Sudbury will work with a consultant to address the municipality's challenges with homelessness and tent encampments.

The city has retained Iain De Jong to consult on the matter. De Jong has written The Book on Ending Homelessness and is president and CEO of a consulting firm called OrgCode.

"The consultant was contacted by staff as a world-renowned expert in addressing encampments within the homeless population," the city of Greater Sudbury said in a written statement. "The consultant will be working with staff to create an encampment plan which will be brought to council in October."

An encampment in Memorial Park, in Sudbury's downtown, has been the scene of a tug-of-war between the city's bylaw officers and people experiencing homelessness since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

On several occasions, the city has evicted people from the park, who had set up tents on its grounds. Since the city has cracked down on the encampments in the park, people have set up their tents in other parts of Greater Sudbury.

De Jong has consulted in cities across Canada, the United States and Australia. He grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, and said that connection to northern Ontario attracted him to collaborating with the city of Greater Sudbury.

Homeless encampments on the rise

"We have seen over the past year and half a number of communities across Canada that have never experienced unsheltered homelessness before or never experienced it at this scale before and it really does require a different way of thinking and leveraging resources," De Jong said.

To tackle the problem, De Jong said he will work with the city to help make the best use of existing resources.

"And so when we take a look at a place like Sudbury, it's not that there's a total absence of services or a total absence of expertise," he said. "A lot of it is going to be about framing the way in which that expertise is leveraged in a new way."

De Jong said his first task will be to determine the needs of the people living in encampments, and how they can be met.

"We try to identify where there's other gaps or barriers that can be addressed in a more timely fashion that will increase the flow through rate from homelessness into housing," he said.