Residents invited to tour the region's new outdoor shelter
Tours are taking place all day on Tuesday from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The new tiny home shelter space at 1001 Erbs Road is just a couple steps away from opening.
It looks vastly different than it did just a few months ago, when it was just an empty plot of land full of wild shrubs.
Media were invited to tour the mostly-finished shelter space on April 20.
WATCH | Fifty new steel shelters will open soon in Waterloo region
Tours for the general public will begin on Tuesday, April 25 from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Those who would like to attend must register in advance on the EngageWR website.
Steel shelters can be moved
Matthew Lubberts is the owner of Housing Now, the construction company building the new encampment.
He said these new tiny homes have a unique feature — they come attached with a steel loop on the roof that makes them easier to move.
"We thought it was important to make something that was relatively easy to move," Lubberts said. "So that if there was something that had to be moved either because of seasons or because of political pressure ... this is something that could be potentially moved."
The shelter space at 1001 Erbs Road has taken lessons from A Better Tent City (ABTC), a similar encampment of 42 tiny homes on Waterloo Region District School Board land near Highway 8. The Erbs Rd. encampment will accommodate 50 people in tiny homes of about 10 square meters in size.
Lubberts said unlike the tiny homes at ABTC, the tiny homes at the region's outdoor shelter were built using steel.
"But I do believe they're mostly wood sheds there [at ABTC]," he said. "So they're susceptible to mould, rot, a few other things like that."
Addressing criticism
After the location of the new outdoor shelter was announced, some people criticised the region for choosing to build it so close to the landfill.
Peter Sweeney, the commissioner of community services at the Region of Waterloo, said the location was chosen to help get the project up and running faster.
"We made a conscious decision ... to choose a location that was outside of the downtown core," he said. "These fifty beds represent less than 10 per cent of the shelter and transitional housing stock in Waterloo region. The rest of the 90 per cent are all in the core. We felt it was important to alleviate some of that pressure and to do that on regional land became the obvious location."
When asked to address concerns from neighbours about a potential increase in the number of rats, Sweeney said the area is unlikely to see an infestation.
"My understanding is that that situation occurs when you have unorganized, unsupervised, unsanctioned and unsafe environments. The design of not only these buildings but of this site is to be safe and clean," he said. "So we don't expect those issues to arise."
Sweeney said there are also plans to rectify the lack of transit in the area.
"We are building into the operational plan and the budget for The Working Centre to provide transportation for everybody that chooses to live here. They're going to set up a schedule and that will be determined by what the actual needs are," he said.
"Once folks arrive here and start living here, we'll get a sense of what kind of access they want and need and we'll provide it and we'll learn from this."
He said staff will be monitoring closely to see where needs may arise.
"I think we're trying to do everything we can to support the people and letting some of the specifics around logistics reveal themselves for the people who are actually going to need those services and are going to choose to live here, rather than trying to make all of those decisions for folks ahead of time," Sweeney said.
"The key here for me is that all things considered, this is mostly right."
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