Four things that move this
None of them take much.
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1. Get educated
The Homeless Hub, run by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, is a free, plain-language library of Canadian research on exactly these questions. An evening there will put you ahead of most of the room.
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2. Come to a Council meeting
Council meetings are public and you can attend without saying a word. Agendas are posted in advance on the City’s website. If you want to speak, you can register as a delegation: five minutes, and the format is friendlier than it sounds.
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3. Ask your councillor three questions
Each one has a concrete answer a councillor can give or refuse to give. They’re written out below.
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4. Bring one person
Send someone the numbers page. It takes five minutes to read and it’s all sourced, so when they push back, the links are right there.
The three questions, in full
Will the City fund more low-barrier shelter capacity before winter?
Kingston’s shelters are full. A congregate bed can’t take a couple who won’t separate, someone with a pet, someone carrying more than a locker holds or someone whose health makes a shared room impossible. Calling that a refusal of help gets it backwards: the only bed on offer is one that doesn’t fit their life, and in January that’s a survival question. Low-barrier capacity is what closes that gap, and it has to be funded before the cold arrives rather than during it.
Will the City publish its Encampment Protocol?
Council Policy #85 refers to it. It doesn’t appear to be public anywhere.
Will the City publish how many people shelters have to turn away?
Kingston acknowledges shelters run at 80 to 100% occupancy and that people get turned away, but it doesn’t publish the number. Shelter operators can’t make the case for the funding they need without it, and neither can anyone else. The missing number is the City’s to publish, and shelter operators are the ones its absence hurts most.