SONK Stands For Better Communities

What is the greatest need of our community?

30,000 Kingstonians without a family doctor!

What is the best use of the former Extendicare facility at 309 Queen Mary Road

309 Queen Mary Road is a medically designed infrastructure featuring ease of access and plenty of parking.

A perfect location for a Family Medicine Centre serving the needs of over 20,000 Kingston families!

Using a building specifically constructed for medical use as a homeless hub/transitional housing centre is NOT based on a "best use" analysis of a valuable and unique public asset.

”Yelling and screaming and fighting all hours of the day and night. Constant sirens from Kingston police, Frontenac paramedics and Kingston Fire & Rescue. Multiple thefts and trespassing on neighbours properties. needles, drug paraphernalia and garbage thrown all over the place.”

- Valerie

”I miss the beautiful park that once was. Now it is unsafe to walk on your own and I would not walk my dog there due to the fear of needles and drugs scattered on the land."

- Eury

”Nothing is safe...it is not uncommon to see strung-out people wandering the neighbourhood, even in our back yards at all hours of the day and night....The amount of dangerous situations the (Hub) clientele bring to the area is hidden from the general public's view by the Staff's propaganda speeches they give to City Council."

- Paul

”The City sold them (Montreal Street neighbours) a lie of safety and health and harmony with displaced people where clients would be monitored and helped by a professional staff 24/7. Instead, the neighbourhood became a crime and drug infested ghetto and the City abandoned those neighbours to a horrifying life of constant fear, theft, violence and drug use."

- Anon

” “Selling... isn’t an option, either... property values have declined to the point of devastation since the hub opened.“I’m so frustrated,” she said. “I can’t sell my house. I can’t get out of this f—— neighbourhood because of them. Nothing has sold. The building across the road, the house down here, nothing is selling. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

- Linda

”This place brought destruction and chaos to the neighbourhood.

- Eddikka

"...the surrounding neighbourhood has seen an increase in crime. Weapon-related things, trespassing, theft, assault, fires – the list is very long,”. 

- Rob

”Now my family and I are being put at risk with people from the Hub using on my property and leaving syringes in places where others are at risk of infection. what about me? What about the others that live in this area?

- Kelly

Here's what neighbours of the current Kingston homeless hub are saying:

I want to save my neighbourhood!

Neighbourhoods are vital social ecosystems

TESTIMONIALS...

Demand safe Neighbourhoods for children & vulnerable seniors!

Problems: Kingston Fire Department calls up over 1000% & Kingston Police responses up 357%

Potential for Rideau Trail parkland and CCA woodland wildfires means a huge risk to residents, property and to the environment...

Dog dies from consuming drugs following walk... CTV News...

Child stuck by used syringe while playing in park in Kingston, Ont. The Canadian Press

The City of Kingston values political expediency over the safety and security of your neighbourhood!

Join Save Our Neighbourhoods Kingston to ensure our community is protected!

Your business damaged & loss of customers!

City Officials claim things will be different at 309 Queen Mary Road when clients of the Hub area are relocated there.... the evidence and experiences of those residents near the Hub on Montreal Street state otherwise!

What is the likely result of a homeless hub/transitional housing experiment in your neighbourhood based on the ICH neighbourhood experience?

Your home and vehicle targeted for theft and vandalism!

Your insurance sky high!

Your property devalued by 25% or more!

It's a nightmare..!

They (City Hall) have been lying to us ever since!"

Read the horrifying recounting of how the City of Kingston abandoned the neighbours of the Integrated Care Hub/Homeless Centre with unending years of constant fear with drug and addiction horrors, intimidation, violence, crime, vandalism and property damage!

Kingston resident living near Integrated Care Hub describes her 'nightmare'

Linda McGinness says she and her son have seen their neighbourhood degrade due to vandalism, squatting, the so-called tent city crisis, theft, violence and drug use, yet she says, city hall has done nothing to help residents in the area

Author of the article: Jan Murphy Published Mar 09, 2024 • Kingston Whig Standard

PHOTO BY JAN MURPHY /The Whig-Standard

Linda McGinness and her son, Blake, live just down from the city's Integrated Care Hub and describe their lives as having been "a nightmare" since the facility opened.

Linda McGinness is angry. She’s scared. And she said she’s finally speaking up.

The 60-year-old Montreal Street resident, who lives near the city’s Integrated Care Hub with her son, Blake, said she and her son are in constant fear of the folks who congregate there. She said that in the short time since the hub opened at the corner of Montreal and Rideau streets in 2020, she and her son have been subjected to harassment, abuse, theft, intimidation and more.

“We’ve been here, I guess, 13 or 14 years,” said Linda, who invited the Whig-Standard into her home to discuss her situation.

There was a time, she said, when their neighbourhood was surrounded by lush greenspace, quiet neighbours and nature and wildlife. Their backyard, like many along the east side of Montreal Street, backed onto the former Belle Park Golf Course, which was run by the city and shuttered in 2017.

“It was great,” said Linda, who spoke nervously as her son sat beside her, while their dog kept guard over both. “You could walk to the K&P Trail without getting stabbed by a needle.”

In fact, Linda said, she chose the location and her house — a heritage home that features a beautiful sprawling kitchen, hardwood floors and a large backyard by city standards — because she was in search of a place to raise her son.

“We’ve been in this neighbourhood a long time,” she said. “Blake was just a little guy (when we moved here). And it was safe then. We left our doors unlocked because I had the (house where all the kids would congregate).”

Sitting on her couch, her hands begin fidgeting as the conversation turns to the current situation, where a few doors down sits the Integrated Care Hub, which opened in late 2020 in response to the mental health, drug poisoning and homelessness crisis being intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In that time, Linda said she and her son have seen their neighbourhood degrade due to vandalism, squatting, the so-called tent city crisis, theft, violence and drug use.

“Belle Park, when the tents came,” she answered when asked when things began to change in the neighbourhood.

“There’d always been a camp out on Belle Island,” she said. “They’ve been very quiet, but once all of the tents (came) here, and they kept coming en masse, that’s when it got bad. And when (the Integrated Care Hub) opened …” she said, pausing to hand a reporter the paperwork she’s had in her possession for four years, “We were told, and it says right there, we were lied to right from the beginning, that says right there that it was going to be mental health services, nothing about drugs.”

The flyer, which was distributed by the City of Kingston to members of the public ahead of the opening of the hub, invited the public to attend an online Zoom meeting to discuss the Integrated Care Hub coming to 661 Montreal St. The flyer described the hub as a 24-7 drop-in centre providing health care, counselling and support services to vulnerable residents, which it said had been approved by city council and was slated to open in November.

“They brought that around before they opened (the hub),” Linda said, her nervousness turning to anger at the subject.

“They’ve been lying to us ever since,” she said.

Linda said she reached out to the Whig-Standard to speak with her in her home and to attend a meeting that night between constituents and King’s Town District Coun. Greg Ridge because she and her son are at their wit’s end.

“I’ve had people doing drug deals on my porch,” she said. “I’ve had people taking a s— in my driveway, peeing in my driveway. There was a guy on my back porch with his pants off. I called the cops, and it took 10 hours for them to get here.”

At the meeting, which was held Feb. 28 inside a coffee shop in the district, one of the residents in attendance spoke about the initial concerns that residents had over the opening of the hub.

“One of our biggest arguments for not having the ICH here had to do with the over-intensification of the services in one area,” the resident told Ridge. “We have John Howard Society, we have Home Base Housing, we have the food bank, there’s St. Vincent de Paul Society, Elizabeth Fry Society, Extend-A-Family.”

Ridge, who took notes and collected paperwork residents offered detailing their concerns during the more than hour-long meeting, agreed.

“We have the (highest) number of shelters in this district,” he told the two tables of constituents at the gathering. “We have the second most affordable, transitional and supportive housing units. I talked to staff about this before. This has been a historical planning thing that’s been going and it’s not appropriate for city planning going forward.”

Linda said the helplessness that she and Blake feel is difficult to describe, and it’s exacerbated, she said, by being a trauma survivor herself.

“I have a weapon behind every door,” she said, pointing around her house. “I have a fake gun, a pellet gun, in my art studio here. I’m scared.”

She again pointed to the paperwork given to her in 2020.

“We haven’t gotten anything (from city officials),” she said. “This is the only time, tonight from 6 to 7,” she said of the meeting with Ridge, which she couldn’t attend herself due to a stress-related flareup of colitis.

“It’s a nightmare.”

Linda described situations where she and her son have witnessed people smoking crack, lighting fires in their backyard, standing outside their windows and yelling profanities, stealing from their property, even describing a scene where they witnessed three Kingston Police officers attempt to subdue a man she described as smaller than most adults after he’d been kicked out of the hub.

“The ones who are unruly, they get kicked off the property, then we get the wrath after they get kicked off,” she said. “It took three cops, he was half the size of me, to get him into the (cruiser).”

Blake also recalled the horrifying scene.

“That was actually probably the most terrifying moment we’ve ever had here, because it took three grown men to put him in,” he said. “He was putting up a fight like you’ve never seen. He was growling and screaming. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

That night at the meeting, Blake told Coun. Ridge of another unsettling ordeal.

“When certain people on the hub property get to be too much for staff to handle or what have you, sometimes they get kicked off the property, and where do they go? They wander down the street, and a lot of the times they end up in my driveway or on our front porch,” he said as Ridge listened. “Just this morning, we had someone on our front porch, babbling, and it was the same person I’ve seen wander down the street before, talking about murdering a family in their home. I’ve heard those words come out of his mouth.”

Linda said she’s had her bicycle stolen, spray paint taken from her back deck and used by those from the hub to paint another bicycle. They’ve even found people sleeping in their truck in their driveway.

“I can’t keep (anything outside),” she said. “I can’t have flowers, (they’ve stolen all) of my solar lights, anything that’s not nailed down,” mother and son said in unison.

“We’ve found multiple people (sleeping) in the (truck),” Blake said.

“In the summer during warmer months, I’d find two Styrofoam cups on my deck, like they’d come there and had their coffee in the morning and then just walked on,” McGinness said, a look of fear returning to her face.

“We have had instances where, luckily the door was locked, we have had people try to come in,” Blake said.

“We’re sitting ducks,” Linda said. “And the city has done nothing.”

Selling their home isn’t an option, either, Linda said, as she said property values have declined to the point of devastation since the hub opened.

“I’m so frustrated,” she said. “I can’t sell my house. I can’t get out of this f—— neighbourhood because of them. Nothing has sold. The building across the road, the house down here, nothing is selling. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”

Linda said they’ve lost faith in not only the city but city police as well.

“There is a guy who walks here every night,” she recounted. “He comes onto my porch. His face is full of metal, he’s disgusting, and he talks and he swears,” she said through tears, “We have no protection,” she said, adding the only deterrent she has is her dog.

She recounted how some of the neighbours even went to meet with Kingston Police asking for a stronger police presence in the neighbourhood, which she said hasn’t happened.

“Our hands are tied; that’s all we get,” she said. “Unless we have a car go missing, we don’t even bother (to call police) anymore.”

Blake told Coun. Ridge that calling police feels pointless.

“A lot of the times, we don’t bother calling the police,” he said to Ridge, a first-time councillor in his first year on council. “I would personally vouch for being part of a conversation when an officer was at our house or nearby and we were talking to them for a related issue, and this officer even told us that they don’t want to come down here, either. To hear an officer actually say to you that they don’t want to be down here, either, and have to deal with this, that is a very disheartening thing to hear when you already feel unsafe. The police don’t even want to come down here to help you deal with these problems.”

Inside the coffee shop, a woman who was sitting at a nearby table, overhearing the conversation between the councillor and his constituents, declared herself as being from the ICH while Blake expressed his concerns to Ridge, who was empathetic and looked genuinely shocked at what he was hearing.

“I live with my mother, but that is going to change as I’m moving out of the neighbourhood, but she is staying and she does not feel safe nor equipped to be there by herself,” Blake said. “I think that’s unfair to her. As a homeowner and as a past trauma victim, she should be able to feel adequately safe in her own home. It’s very common for us to have people in the middle of the night try to open our doors, look in our windows, on top of many other things. That can be unsettling for anybody.”

Blake also pressed Ridge on whether the city can help residents in the area who have seen their home values and quality of life degrade while their taxes have increased.

“My mother is retired,” he said. “She is on a fixed income, like a lot of people, and property taxes did go up. I think she saw a raise of about a hundred dollars a month in the last two or three years. That was one of things where it seems like we were not only surrounded and having issues at our own home, but now it’s costing us more to face those issues.”

Ridge, clearly affected by what he was hearing, vowed to look into the issues neighbours are facing and to follow up with Linda and Blake, and others, personally in the coming weeks.

Blake told Ridge that conflicting reports around the fate of the care hub only made matters more muddled for Montreal Street residents.

“I wouldn’t wish what we’ve experience on anybody else, but of course there is part of you that goes, ‘Are we finally going to get a break?’ he said. “It’s disheartening for me to think about leaving this neighbourhood and having my mom afraid to be there by herself. That’s really hard for me. That’s hard for her. I’m not sure what I can even do for her, say to her. It would be one thing if the hub was going to be shipping services elsewhere, there wouldn’t be such a presence. I’m not even sure what the solution looks like. I just feel for her as the property owner and someone who is at risk of being there alone a lot of the time. It’s scary for me there, too. Even when there is the four of us there, it’s scary,” he said.

One resident expressed concerns about being heard by the woman sitting nearby, who later was noted to be sleeping at the table.

“All of a sudden, I want to lower my voice because I know that some of them know who I am and where I live,” one resident whispered.

“I’m really sorry,” Ridge said to Blake, sincerity in his voice and on his face. “I’m really sorry for what’s been going on in the neighbourhood, for what you and your mother have been experiencing.”

Earlier, Linda had admitted that she doesn’t know what the answers are when it comes to dealing with the homeless and mental health crisis unfolding throughout the city, but she does know she’s living her own personal nightmare, which will be compounded when Blake moves out in the near future.

“I panic every night,” she said. “I’m afraid at night.”

Montreal Street has become “Kingston’s very own skid row,” Blake said.

“When we moved here, the golf course was open and it was beautiful, nice and manicured,” he said. “Sure, it’s still Montreal Street, it was never Alwington (Place), but it was great.”

“I can’t handle the stress,” Linda added.

Ridge, meanwhile, promised the small group of citizens that the issue of the hub, homelessness and the mental health crisis are of the highest priority for himself and city council.

“It is the most important issue that I think I’m facing and the city is facing in terms of what to do, where to get the resources to help people, how to help people and what that means because it means different things for different people.”

janmurphy@postmedia.com

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Our next demonstration showing opposition to the destruction of our neighbourhoods will be at the Bath & Queen Mary Road traffic lights on Saturday May 4 from 12 pm. - 1 pm.