The City of Thunder Bay is allocating $60,000 for the purchase of a vehicle to be used by the Encampment Response Team.
The response team forms the seventh point of the city’s ten-part human rights plan for dealing with homeless encampments.
The team is meant to deal with day-to-day problems arising in the encampments, which will take pressure off of the city’s emergency services.
The Encampment Response team will use the vehicle to attend to those day-to-day issues and needs that may come with administering the city’s encampments.
The vehicle will primarily be used to encourage voluntary relocations of unhoused individuals, supporting the ability for those individuals to have their possessions transported along with them.
The money for the vehicle comes from a grant worth almost $240,000 that the city secured from Health Canada in February.
All ongoing costs for the maintenance and operation of the vehicle will come from the budget already allocated for the ten-part plan.
City Council unanimously voted in favour of procuring the vehicle.
