Dismantling our tents will only hurt us more, homeless woman says

Trish Trecartin isn't sure where she and her fiancé will go when their tent at the homeless encampment on Fredericton's north side is dismantled.

But she does know this: it won't be a shelter.

Trecartin, 27, lost all her belongings when the propane tank she was using to heat her tent exploded Wednesday night. It was terrifying, she said, but she'd still rather take her chances staying at the encampment than go to a shelter.

Aside from having to be separated from her fiancé, she doesn't want to risk the confrontation and violence she's encountered in the past.

"I will not go to a shelter," she said. "I'm scared someone would do something."

The fire in Trecartin's tent at the homeless camp off Gibson Street was the second fire this week. On Tuesday night, a fire at camp behind Government House, also caused by a propane heater, destroyed three tents and left five people displaced and with no belongings.

That incident prompted Fredericton Police Chief Roger Brown to issue a statement Wednesday, saying the city's tent sites are a hazard to the people who live there and will be closed down for the winter.

The dismantling was to begin Friday morning.

"I'm going to say 'crisis' because it is," Brown told Information Morning Fredericton on Thursday. "Somebody's going to get hurt and if all of us ... allow this to continue and somebody does indeed perish at one of these sites, there's going to be an outcry."

'I almost lost my life last night'

The precariousness of the situation was forcefully brought home to Trecartin late Wednesday night.

Trecartin and her fiancé were trying to get their makeshift outdoor stove working, but it wouldn't ignite.

"It was cold out and I didn't want to bother, so I brought some food into my tent and I went to go light my propane," Trecartin said. "And when I lit that lighter it went poof, right in my face. I was hysterical. I'm still lost today. Like, I almost lost my life last night." 

The fire destroyed her clothes, her blankets, everything, she had.

Still, she stayed in the tent that night and Thursday night as well. But on Friday, the dismantling of tents will begin, and Trecartin said she doesn't know what she'll do.  

"I wish we could fight the [people] here that are going to kick us out and say, 'You know what? We have nowhere to go. And you guys are going to kick us out?' 

"Like, we live here," she said. "They're literally kicking us out of our own homes." 

Trecartin said she understands the concerns about the danger posed by propane heaters, but she doesn't think people understand the dangers posed by forcing people out of the tent camps.

The camps are a community, co-ordinated by outreach volunteers and by the residents themselves to ensure that the people living there get along reasonably well, she said. 

The women generally have male partners who look out for them. They can come and go as they please. 

None of that applies at shelters, Trecartin said.

"So where are we supposed to go?"

That's a question that's been on Joanne Barlow's mind this week.

Barlow has worked with the city's homeless for years, and has a tight-knit network of volunteers who check in on the tent site residents daily, doing head counts, keeping their phone handy at all times in case someone needs to reach them. 

She was at the fire site on Tuesday night behind Government House.

And when Trecartin's belongings went up in flames Wednesday night, she knew about it within minutes and was sending a plea out on social media for help and supplies.

Barlow said she knows heating tents with propane heaters isn't ideal, but worries that if the encampments are dismantled, some of the residents will "scatter" and the outreach volunteers who are currently in touch with them every day won't know where to find them. 

Last winter, one resident fled to the woods when his tent was dismantled, she said.

"It was almost a mile in the woods. He found an old doghouse. And that's where he stayed."

Barlow said much is being done to help the city's homeless, but there's room to do more.

She'd like to see efforts to educate them about fire safety, provide them with warm, military-grade tents and sleeping bags to cut down on the need for dangerous heat sources, expand mental-health assistance and perhaps first and foremost, revisit the rules around banning people from shelters. 

"I have called shelters, begging, 'Can you take this man? ... Can you take this girl?' and I always get a no because of a ban," she said. 

Short bans of 24 to 48 hours make sense, "absolutely," she said.

"They do need rules and they do need the structure. But a six-month ban? That's not even rational."

We can't allow this to continue, chief says

Brown said he knows not everyone will want to go to a shelter. But he's not prepared to stand by and wait for another fire, perhaps this time a fatal one, to sweep through the encampments.

"It's unfortunate they make that choice to not go where there are available opportunities," he said.

"But allowing a tent site to continue ... using propane tank inside the tent ... It's just not safe and I'm not prepared in the job I'm in to sit back and allow that to continue, knowing full well that the outcome could be disastrous."

It's a concern Warren Maddox, executive director of Fredericton Homeless Shelters, shares.

Maddox said he's gravely concerned about the threat posed by heaters, and said shelters are ready and willing to help provide a safe alternative to sleeping outdoors in tents.

"I'm looking out my office window at [an encampment] and there's probably 11 to 15 people at the south side one," he said in an interview Thursday. "I've heard that there's around 20 to 25 on the north side one.

"But ... there's capacity within the system. There has been all fall and in this part of the winter."

Maddox said Fredericton Homeless Shelters and a number of other agencies, including the John Howard Society, will be on hand to help people when the encampments come down.

Brown said that will be happening Friday and in the days ahead, but cautioned against casting police officers as bullies, noting they have overseen the dismantling of encampments in the past without having to resort to force. 

"Let's not paint a picture again in the public's mind that these big, bad police officers are going to go tear tents down," he said.

"We're working with all our community partners with these individuals ... to find alternative solutions outside the tents. And it's working."

He noted he himself has gone to the tent sites in the past and transported people to injection sites in a police cruiser because they needed a ride.

"We all need to do our part to give them the assistance they need," he said. "But letting this continue is crazy and we just can't do it."