Hamilton City Council recently directed staff to complete a competitive procurement for private property clean ups, funded up to a maximum of $150,000. Photo Credit: City of Hamilton/X.
The City of Hamilton will begin offering clean up services to residents and small-business property owners impacted by homeless encampments.
Hamilton City Council recently directed staff to complete a competitive procurement for private property clean ups, funded up to a maximum of $150,000.
The funds will come from the Environmental Services Division – Parks and Cemeteries Section 2024 Operating Budget.
Council also approved $74,000 for a Temporary Parks Supervisor and a vehicle to oversee the clean-up program.
Costs to continue the program permanently will be included in 2025 Operating Budget discussions.
The new Clean Up Protocol will see the city help remove waste from private properties that are adjacent to encampment sites.
Staff are directed to regularly report back to the General Issues Committee on the program’s progress.
Currently, the City is not involved in encampment clean-ups on non-City property.
In order to qualify for a clean-up, residents or small-business property owners must work with city staff and will be asked to complete a criteria checklist.
Staff will then verify the information on the checklist and engage with the contractor to ensure clean up.
A City report by Director of Environmental Services Cynthia Graham notes, “The litter generated by encampments on City lands that are impacting private property do not reflect the owner’s efforts to maintain their property to standards expected and can represent a financial strain to a private homeowner or business.”
The Housing Focussed Street Outreach team, which fields emails and phone messages from Hamilton residents regarding encampments, has reportedly received 151 emails per week since September 2023.
Between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of those messages were related to complaints about impacts of the encampments to private property, which were outside of the City’s responsibility to clean up.
Thus, staff anticipate about 20 to 25 unique requests for clean-ups each week.
However, Graham’s report also notes that the city has never hired a contractor for this type of work before and thus “it is not known what the costs will be for this work.”
Thus, although staff will be starting the program this year with an allocation of $150,000, the city may make adjustments in future years based on actual costs.
This new Clean Up Protocol follows the ratification of the city’s Encampment Protocol in August 2023 which allows encampments on public property, including in parks, with certain restrictions.
For example, encampments must be at least 10 metres away from private property lines, a rule that is sometimes broken.
Even when that rule is followed, garbage from encampments has still been ending up on private property.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
