Bylaws must be followed! The tiny house was an illegal build! A non-lethal instrument was drawn. Oh, but not fired. Gee, that's wonderful news. Not scary at all, then. Good grief. A man with such severe schizophrenia he couldn't live with anyone, and a son who loved him enough to give him this meager shelter where a solitary life and 4 walls brought some comfort. Did bylaw just show up out of the blue, with police carrying guns? Where were the mental health workers who could have given this man some help? Surely he is now in a downward spiral. We must do better.
this is absolutely disgusting ...and judging by the officials comments after complaints...the people who committed this travesty of justice should all either be retrained to learn compassion , or be fired
This is how we deal with homelessness. Watch how bad things get as more and more people are forced into being homeless and this is the way our police deal with it.
Humanity seems to have left the building in this case. Even though the tiny house was illegal, it seems heartless and cruel to demolish the man’s shelter and toss his few possessions around. It sounds more like the Trump administration than Canada.
"reducing the parking requirements for total number of vehicular parking and visitor parking". Maximizing profit while offloading the parking headaches onto the surrounding community. Which seems to be approved over and over again. You can't keep doing this without building public transportaion and biking/pedesterian improvements. Also, that section of West street is already bottle necked constantly. Anyone who is local knows that whole intersection is a rat's nest. We need housing but the area needs to be able to handle it.
I'm shocked. This is no way to treat a fellow human being. I 'm surprised they didn't just leave him out in the cold. This incident should be investigated and the people who behaved so badly should be reprimanded. The little shelter that was destroyed should be rebuilt so at least there can be some humanity shown for this poor, man
For years, bus riders have had to wait in a ditch (West Street south) in front of a motel that would not let them inside. And now the same physical conditions are to be found in front of Opera House. Absolutely ridiculous that bus riders wait in rain, (sometimes pouring rain), snow, sleet, ice, wind. Gee, if only Orillia had a bus station (already built!) somewhere in town?
Why the city never decided to turn the old train station into a bus depot for the city buses I will never understand. It’s out of the way of the main vein of downtown, so less congestion especially during the peak times, but still close enough to be reasonable and it has plenty of room.
I think the matter was long overdue for a challenge to the special privileges that the grape island residents had. They don’t own the water lot we all do as Orillia taxpayers.
Why are they so overwhelmed, we get rough winters here every year, could they not anticipate this and hire the necessary amount of staff to help manage this busy period, and allocate hours to the necessary companies? Or is this another Covid casualty business where they realized how much work they could make a smaller team do and never bothered hiring more people once things settled because the shareholders make more at the ends of the day, I’ve seen plenty of that the last few years.
This is absolutely horrible that this man was treated this way! While the structure was illegal, it nor the man was doing anybody any harm. And they should have been forced to leave it up until the man was found suitable accomodations and only then kick him out and tear it down.
There is empty space at city centre; main floor and second floor, free parking to bring in donations and free parking for people to access. Close to methadone clinics, Lighthouse , shelter for youth, Lighthouse Outreach at parking lot #1 and warming centre. Could act as a warming centre also as there is a limit of 20 at new West st location. Time to step up city council and city staff, election is just a few months away!
Stories like hers absolutely disgust me ...taking advantage of a woman who has nothing but an ODSP pension is so wrong , but these people have no conscience at all ...I am also a widow on a pension , but luckily more than the cheap gov't ODSP pension provides ! so yes I will be contributing to her GoFundMe...not a lot, but every bit helps ...hope those in better-off positions will also assist her.