As cities in Canada debate how to deal with tent encampments of people who are unhoused, a people-driven idea in Kitchener-Waterloo is showing a positive way forward and inspiring similar solutions to pop up there and elsewhere across Canada.

A Better Tent City is a community-based approach to providing a home and a sense of belonging for approximately 50 residents who have experienced chronic homelessness in Waterloo Region. This video tells how it got started.

Waterloo’s homeless population is approximately 1,100 people, and tripled from 2018 to 2021, but there is only room for between 416 and 553 in shelters.

In the fall of 2019, the late Kitchener businessman and philanthropist Ron Doyle approached Jeff Willmer “with the idea of a tiny home village or a community where we would give each person their own cabin, their own tiny home and let them form a community and let them manage it themselves.”. They began implementing the idea in April 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Willmer, chair of ABTC’s inaugural board, worked with the City of Kitchener as an urban planner, then director of planning and later, in 1989, as chief administrative officer until he retired in 2017. 

“Ron actually owned industrial property, part of which was an event venue and he thought there are no events going on why don’t we use that,” Willmer said. “We set up tiny homes outside and there was a kitchen and washroom already there and so it was pretty quick to get going.”

Nadine Green, who is now the site co-ordinator, owned a convenience store in downtown Kitchener where she had provided shelter for people experiencing homelessness until she was evicted in January 2020. The community is unique, she says, because residents can live life on their own terms. They can live in a cabin alone, as a couple or with a pet — which is not always possible in more traditional homeless shelters. 

“ABTC began as a low barrier/housing first approach to provide an opportunity to move people experiencing homelessness from dangerous conditions on the streets into a more safe and supportive community with protection from the environment, access to hygiene and sanitation facilities, and connection to services and healthcare on a path to stable housing,” it says on its site.

“Our name was chosen intentionally. ABTC is not perfect but has been continuously improving since day one. Every day, week and month we become a better tent city. ABTC began better than most tent cities as we had a willing landlord, washrooms on site and access to a shared space with a makeshift kitchen.”

Although they have had to move the community twice over the past few years, as of June 2023, A Better Tent City is now located on land that is owned partly by the Waterloo Region District School Board and partly by the City of Kitchener. It also houses an administrative building.

“There was this big patch of lawn, this green area between the highway and their office building and they agreed to let us set up our community there,” Willmer told Daily Commercial News.

There are now 42 cabins on the property, purchased from Stoney Ridge Sheds. Made of wood or wood composite, the cabins are insulated, panelled, and then wired for power and a radiator. The washroom and showers are housed in a shipping container, and three connected portables contain the kitchen, dining, laundry and more washrooms.

Volunteers did the plumbing, insulation, tile work, and ramping for barrier-free accessibility, WIllmer says. “Once we needed to get permits and approvals for kitchen and washrooms…that’s where we really needed someone else to be the project manager,” Willmer said.

“Alair Homes stepped up there. Navacon Construction did the trenching to bring in water and sewer to the property. MTE engineering did all the structural engineering to certify that the portable classrooms had proper foundation. We put them on helical piles so we could pick them up, move them.”

“It really was volunteers including the local Carpenters’ Union that did a lot of work…There are two guys onsite almost every day even now doing construction and maintenance,” Willmer told the Journal of Commerce.

While it began as a community initiative, the municipalities have since come on board in many ways, in addition to providing the property. They were able to arrange for the shelter allowances residents get through the Ontario Works Program or Ontario Disability Support Program to go directly to A Better Tent City so it has an operating budget to pay utilities and staff.

A Better Tent City is not a solution to the homelessness crisis, Willmer says.“The hope is that they become more ready to transition to housing once housing becomes available,” he said. “This is not a permanent solution but it’s a good transitional step. The long-term solution is affordable, supportive housing for everybody.”

The goal was always to prove the concept and encourage others to replicate it and Waterloo Region has done so. “They have a community just outside Waterloo city limits and it looks just like ours really, 50 tiny homes, a shared facility for kitchen, washroom and laundry,” Willmer explained to the Journal of Commerce. “People have the privacy and dignity of their own space but the community connections in the shared facilities…That’s a really important form of support that they understand it, they see the value in it and now they’re doing it themselves.”

It is run by The Working Centre, which also has built 21 new apartments at its Victoria Street location in downtown Kitchener which cost between $400 and $600 a month. Within two weeks of putting out for a call for tenants, 30 people had applied, said Joe Mancini, director at The Working Centre. “I think we could fill 100 units without even trying,” he said.

Sources:

Kitchener’s A Better Tent City provides tiny homes with a big purpose. Daily Commercial News, Jun 19 2023

‘I feel at home’: Tenants move into The Working Centre’s new affordable apartments CTV News, Jun. 2, 2023

For the homeless, Kitchener’s Better Tent City offers alternative to typical shelters CBC, Feb 20 2021

How ‘A Better Tent City’ is trying a new way to tackle homeless in Kitchener. Podcast, the Toronto Star.