THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay-Rainy River Marcus Powlowski cotninues to oppose building a temporary shelter village in the south downtown core.
In an open letter issued on Wednesday, Powlowski reiterated his “unequivocal opposition to the Miles St. site,” a sentiment he shared last fall when the site was first proposed
“I don't agree with the site. Council voted on it. They voted it down. I'm certainly not convinced that a lot's changed in the last six months, and certainly I haven't changed my opinion. I think putting it on Mile Street would be a terrible place to put it,” Powlowski told Newswatch on Thursday.
He said that good governance is about finding a balance with competing interests.
“We all ought to have an interest in providing shelter for the homeless people. We ought to all have compassion for those people, and I think we do, and it's certainly in the municipality, the federal government's best interests to try to help them out,” Powlowski said.
“However, I think we also have to account for the interests of other people and to put the temporary homeless shelter in downtown Fort William would basically, I think, ensure that downtown Fort William would continue to be basically a ghetto for the next five to 10 years. It's certainly not in the interests of the very many people who live in or around the downtown south core or have businesses in the south core that it goes there.”
In his letter, Powlowski said, he “will continue to vigorously oppose any federal funding for a temporary shelter village at the Miles Street site.”
The city is receiving $2.8 million in provincial funding on the condition that all the units be delivered and installed by Feb. 27, 2026.
However, there has yet to be any federal funding for the project.
In an interview with Thunder Bay-Superior North MP Patty Hajdu, Newswatch asked if federal funding for the temporary village is being considered.
“The challenge with assigning federal funding to a project that still doesn't have a location is that there are demands all across the country. The federal government generally won't commit to a project until a location has been selected, until there's a clear plan in terms of what the process will look like, and when that process will unfold,” Hajdu said.
“Having said that, when the city determines the location, we will work with them to make sure that they're prioritized, as that's my job to advocate for the city of Thunder Bay to receive the appropriate funding that they would need through the federal government. Obviously, that will be determined on fund availability, the size of the project, and the demand across the country. We'll have to see how the cards unfold in terms of the city's own process.”
Powlowski said in his letter that he has proposed several locations which would be suited for the project.
“There's a lot of land in Intercity, which is a little further away from the core population, where a lot fewer people would be adversely affected. We ought to be putting it there,” Powlowski said.
He said he has been working in the emergency departments for the last 20 years and “the social services are basically the police, the paramedics, and the emergency room.”
Therefore, a preferable site for the temporary village would be on land in the Intercity area because it’s closer to the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre.
“The Intercity area is a big area. You look at the whole area across from the hospital, for example, they have property there, and the city says, ‘Well, you know that's valuable property. We don't want to put it there.’ Well, how many people are going to be adversely affected by putting it there, whereas in downtown, there are a lot of people and businesses that are adversely being affected. So, I think the city is being kind of short-sighted saying, ‘Oh, those pieces of property we want to do something else with them, but that piece of property in downtown, do whatever you want with that,'” Powlowski said.
He also noted another location in the Intercity area was located off Maureen Street near the Thunder Bay Port.
“I guess the city said, ‘well, it'd been contaminated’ or something, but my understanding was that it had been where trailers had like years ago emptied their sewage stuff, which I don't think it would be an ongoing concern like 35 years later if it's just that kind of waste,'” Powlowski said.
“But even if it was, there are plenty of other regions around there, the Intercity region where you have a lot of businesses, industrial areas, where again I don't think there would be such an adverse impact on those businesses if there was a shelter because they're not places where people come to shop like the downtown core for example.”
The city council report on the temporary village does have a third option for city council to review, located in the Intercity area.
The Hillyard Site, next to 8th Avenue, was listed as a potential location; however, it is the least viable option when weighed next to the Miles and Cumberland sites.
Hillyard scored 73 per cent in the ranked properties evaluation, representing the fifth highest score overall, while Cumberland scored 76 per cent, representing the fourth highest overall score.
Miles Street scored 87 per cent with the highest overall score.
The Hillyard Site scored lower because it is adjacent to both a publicly accessible active transportation corridor and a public off-leash dog park creating an increased risk of conflict between shelter village residents and corridor or park users, “particularly in these discreet, lightly populated areas where few witnesses would be present in the event of an incident,” the report states.
