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Re: Letter: Drop-in centres can help homeless reconnect, Jan. 14, 2025
It was encouraging to see the suggestion in the letter to the editor that drop-in centres can help the unhoused reconnect with the community. Hopefully, this type of compassion can help pave the way for more drop-in centres, as well as emergency and transitional housing development in Aurora.
Newmarket, a town that already has more per capita shelter beds and community support services than any other town in York Region, recently opened another drop-in centre on Yonge Street, offering daily refuge from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. While this ad-hoc drop-in centre is desperately needed, it is underfunded and understaffed and is a Band Aid solution to a bigger problem that should be shared by all municipalities in York Region.
There has been a lot of misdirection regarding the land at 14452 Yonge St., Aurora both in print and in council meetings. Attempts made in the Aurora committee of the whole meeting on Dec. 10, 2024 to clarify the region’s position on this matter were met with more diversionary double talk.
After that municipal meeting, the questions below were posed directly to Lisa Gonsalves, Regional Municipality of York commissioner of community and health services:
- Can we ask the region if this site, 14452 Yonge St., has been rejected simply because… (it is absolutely not viable) or not included because this council a year ago rejected it at the second public planning meeting?
- If the will of council changed, and if there was full support from the town of Aurora, would the region reconsider 14452 Yonge as an option for the men’s transitional shelter in York Region?
On Dec. 23, 2024, commissioner Gonsalves, responded:
“In accordance with the Planning Act, York Region put forward a zoning bylaw amendment to allow for emergency and transitional housing at 14452 Yonge St. in the Town of Aurora. A decision was made on Feb. 13, 2024 by Town of Aurora council to not move forward with the application. As a result of the Town of Aurora council decision, the site is no longer under consideration for emergency and transitional housing.
"Ongoing partnerships with local municipalities are critical in identifying sites and expediting planning approvals to support building new and redeveloping existing emergency and transitional housing. The Region is open to considering any sites supported by local municipalities for the purposes of emergency and transitional housing.”
It is incorrect to say that the region would not reconsider 14452 Yonge if the Town of Aurora reversed their zoning decision for this property. With enough pressure from the residents of Aurora and York Region, through their municipal and regional councillors, we might be able to bring the plans for 14452 Yonge transitional and emergency housing back before the Aurora council for approval. Make your voice count where it really counts!
"People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes."
Lisa Fraser
Newmarket
