Inside the on-the-land-camp for people experiencing homelessness

“Throw as much funding as you could into programs like this.”

That’s what Tiffany Thrasher would like to say to the NWT’s premier, RJ Simpson, about the on-the-land camp she’s been staying at for the past week and a half, located about 50 minutes outside Yellowknife on the Ingraham Trail.

The camp, which was announced in November, is funded through a $635,000 contribution from the federal government plus $7,000 from the GNWT.

It is designed to provide safe, warm accommodation and land-based programming for people who may be experiencing homelessness.

On Tuesday, Cabin Radio was among Yellowknife media outlets invited by the GNWT to visit the camp and speak with residents in interviews arranged by the territory.

Eric Neba is the executive director of NWT-ICS, the NGO chosen by the GNWT to run the camp.

He said the camp is currently home to 10 residents and has housed up to 16 people at a time since it opened last month. The facility can accommodate up to 30 people.

The program is operating under an abstinence-based model. Applicants must be sober for three days before they can be admitted and substance use is not permitted at the facility.

Each application to participate in the program is screened by a committee of representatives from service providers such as the Salvation Army and Yellowknife’s day shelter. (The GNWT said the Yellowknife Women’s Society, which was initially named as a partner, later decided not to take part in the screening process. The society declined a request for an on-the-record interview.)

The Salvation Army and shelter can also refer people to the program.

Neba said counselling is being offered twice a week, Elders have been visiting three times a week to offer activities like traditional cooking and mitt making, and outdoor activities such as smudging and trapping take place twice a week.

“Being on the land is really healing,” said Thrasher.

“It makes me feel closer to Jesus and it makes me feel closer to the Creator.”

Thrasher, from Inuvik, said she has called Yellowknife home for the past 25 years. She described losing her housing after struggling with addiction and following a break-in, and said doing so had led her to a downtown tent encampment and the Yellowknife Women’s Centre.

“A lot of bad things had happened in that camp,” said Thrasher.

She said she spent significant time in hospital after a wound on her foot, obtained while at the encampment, became infected.

“Staying at the women’s shelter was really hard, so a lot of the times, I just
walked around – even with an injury,” she said.

Thrasher said being at the on-the-land camp, where she has access to food, shelter and heat, has been a “blessing” and her foot has almost completely healed.

Now, she worries about what might happen after the camp’s planned 10-week program is over in January.

“I don’t want to live in a tent again. I don’t want to walk the streets in minus-60 or whatever the heck it’s going to be,” said Thrasher.

She said she will try to get into a trauma-based recovery program, something she may have to seek out in the south if she can’t find a spot in Yellowknife.

Shelter system at capacity

The Salvation Army in Yellowknife runs a men’s shelter with room for 39 people and an eight-bed withdrawal management program.

Tony Brushett, the Salvation Army’s executive director in the city, said he has been ringing alarm bells about the overcrowded state of Yellowknife’s shelter system for months.

Brushett said the idea for the new on-the-land camp grew from conversations with other service providers and the GNWT about the encampment downtown.

“We needed something to offer those people who were sleeping rough,” said Brushett.

“Many of them had been banned from the shelters for varying reasons, and you had those who were just being released from prison again, who had nowhere to go. So instead of dropping them right off at our shelter, we were advocating for some kind of another option.”

NWT-ICS did not come through a formal request for proposals to be chosen as the on-the-land camp’s operator.

The territorial government said the group – which is new to operating this kind of facility – was chosen when “other NGOs and Indigenous organizations either did not respond or indicated either a lack of capacity or lack of interest.”

In the first weeks of the camp’s operation, Brushett said he didn’t notice any reduction in the number of people at the Salvation Army shelter.

This week, he said there wasn’t the usual influx of new people into the shelter – though he wouldn’t necessarily attribute that to the camp. The Salvation Army has only referred three to five people to the program, Brushett said.

He noted that while the camp has overheads the Salvation Army doesn’t have, such as leasing its grounds, the camp is operating at an apparent cost of around $917 per night, per person while providing accommodation to 10 people. (The cost per person would go down if the camp had more residents.)

Brushett compared that to the Salvation Army, which he said runs a deficit of more than $1 million per year and is underfunded for some programs by several hundred thousand dollars.

The Salvation Army supports some GNWT programs “to a staggering amount and one that is not sustainable for much longer for us,” he said.

“I can only hope that when it comes to the GNWT in the coming days – when we come to them to ask for our needs to run our programs for the next year – we’re looked at as favourably as NWT-ICS was for this agreement.”