Nearby, next to the now-shuttered Hudson’s Bay store, someone lies on a bench inside a bus shelter while Winnipeg Transit riders wait outside. “This is not my downtown Winnipeg,” said Kathleen Gibbons, 73, who is tired of seeing the sight every day. “I see a big change for the worse. I think the homeless have increased, they’re much more visible. Damaged buildings — you know, I’ve seen a lot of buildings that have cardboard or wood in the windows because they’ve been crushed.” A person lies inside a bus shelter in Vaughan in downtown Winnipeg on Thursday. (Austin Grabish/CBC) Gibbons has lived downtown for 14 years and grew up coming to the area as a child to shop at the Eaton’s department store, which was demolished in 2003. The retired social worker, who used to work with the homeless, says she doesn’t feel safe waiting inside a Winnipeg Transit bus shelter.
“Crisis Management”
“I’m not going to go in there when they’re passing the bottle or the joint or whatever — the meth pipe,” he said. People have been loitering or living in bus shelters in Winnipeg for years and the problem, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, doesn’t seem to be going away. “We are managing a crisis right now,” said Jason Whitford, CEO of End Homelessness Winnipeg. “We need resources — daytime resources — where our relatives can go on the streets, whether they want to go back to school, whether they want to get a counseling session, whether they want access to health care.”
A longtime resident decides to move
With the closure of many public spaces during the pandemic, Whitford says, homelessness became more visible and is still present because of the number of businesses that have closed. He pointed to housing as a possible solution. “We have a housing shortage in our city. Low-income housing is needed. Low-income, decent, safe housing is needed throughout our city.” A longtime resident of the center says he decided to leave the area in June after living there for 22 years. Miungun Olson, who grew up homeless as a teenager and moved into a downtown apartment in 1999, says that while the area lost its luster in his opinion about 10 years ago, it wasn’t until after the pandemic that he feared for his safety . Seeing meth users running around the area screaming became alarming, “and that’s when I started to feel unsafe,” Olson said. “They’ve been running down the streets down there. There was nobody else walking or doing anything, and a lot of vehicles broke down and it just looked like there were no cops around.” Olson says it’s important to distinguish between the homeless and distressed drug users when talking about people’s perception of downtown. “They think the homeless are really dangerous.” he said. “And you know, when I was homeless, we were always victims of what was going on, it was never the other way around.” Jason Whitford, CEO of End Homelessness Winnipeg, says homeless people don’t have many places to go during the day. She believes transitional and supportive housing will make a difference. (Austin Grabish/CBC) Downtown Winnipeg Biz, which speaks for the downtown business community, says there is no silver bullet that will solve the area’s problems. CEO Kate Fenske says its creation Downtown Community Safety Partnership makes a difference by patrolling downtown 24/7. While the pilot program is connecting some of the city’s most vulnerable with the right resources, Fenske says it’s not enough. “We know we have to grow this program,” he said. “We need to secure some sustainable funding so we can take it beyond December of this year.” He said cities across the country are facing similar safety concerns in their downtown areas. “The goal is to have more people downtown,” he said. “That’s it.” Kate Fenske, CEO of the Downtown Winnipeg BIZ, says downtown has a lot of wins to celebrate, like ManyFest, which drew about 40,000 people downtown. “We need to do more things like this,” he says. (Jason Empson/CBC) Even with the return of thousands of University of Winnipeg students downtown, Brigette Tadao says she doesn’t feel safe. When asked about her first impression of Winnipeg, the international student from the Philippines said, “When I saw the… homeless people around, I don’t really feel safe, especially when you see the people in the bus shelters.” Tadao, who has been in Winnipeg for about nine months, says she wants to see police on the street patrolling and thinks bus shelters should be removed because commuters are “scared to go inside.” Gibbons says she hopes the 15 candidates running for mayor will offer ideas on how to improve downtown. Her message to mayoral candidates: “Please consider the homeless. They’re people too, you know.” He is blunt with how he feels about the current situation. “I think Winnipeg as a whole is going downhill,” Gibbons said. “I’m not proud to live here, but I’m 73 years old and I’m here.”
