Jarvis: Swimming versus housing the homeless — time for a gut check

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“You’re planning to utilize a world-class training facility to house this?” the email asked. “This” refers to homeless people.

No one will want to use the aquatic centre after “they” have been in there, a caller said, referring to, you know, homeless people.

“I shudder to think how expensive it will be to disinfect and repair our facility once this is over,” someone wrote on Facebook.

This is some of the blowback that Mayor Drew Dilkens and the city are fielding after announcing that the aquatic centre is being converted into a temporary emergency shelter for homeless people because the Downtown Mission is closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak.

Scrutiny and criticism are part of Dilkens’ job, “but this,” he said, “is getting to the point where it’s cruel.”

It’s ugly, and it’s disturbing.

The pandemic doesn’t discriminate, we were told when it hit a year ago.

We know now that’s not true.

As Dilkens said, this is a tale of two cities. Some people are lucky. They’re still working during the pandemic, and they’re socking away cash.

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But others are struggling. More than 2,000 casino employees have been off work for almost a year. So have many working in the hospitality sector and the arts.

As the mayor’s chief of staff, Andrew Teliszewsky, said, for some people, the most pressing concern is when the next Amazon delivery will arrive. For others, it’s how they’ll feed their families.

And then there are the homeless. They’re among the most vulnerable in this pandemic. Stay home? You can’t stay home if you don’t have a home.

It’s time for a gut check.

Swimmers have been waiting patiently for the aquatic centre to reopen, the Facebook post read. Kids need the pool for recreation and training. Coaches need it for their jobs.

“I feel for our homeless, but they are not more important than the hundreds that need this pool open,” the person wrote.

Keep them safe? another person sneered. “Have you seen them around downtown, everybody together sharing cigarettes, smoking marijuana …”

While everyone is frustrated by a year of restrictions, some people are confusing first world problems with actual dire straits.

Here’s what homeless people, and the city, face.

As of Wednesday morning, 81 people at the Downtown Mission and 34 at the Salvation Army are infected, including some staff.

The Mission is closed, by order of Medical Officer of Health Dr. Wajid Ahmed. The Mission was also ordered to halt admissions to its interim shelter in the former library on Ouellette Avenue. The Salvation Army also can’t accept new people because of its outbreak.

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The city is already operating two isolation and recovery centres in local hotels for homeless people and foreign farm workers who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The hotel for homeless people has 40 beds. There are 48 people staying there. It’s over capacity.

The city is already using Water World as a place for homeless people to go during the day.

Seventy-five more beds are needed for those who aren’t infected but now have nowhere to go in the middle of winter. No other hotels are willing to take them. The aquatic centre has the space and the bathrooms, it can be converted immediately because the city owns it, and it’s near the mission.

So, as Dilkens, a former swimmer who chaired the steering committee that built the aquatic centre, said Wednesday, “we don’t have the luxury to prioritize Aqua Fit, diving lessons or lap-swimming over these people.”

It’s hard to believe this needs saying, but “it is more important to ensure our homeless population doesn’t freeze to death in the middle of winter because there is literally nowhere else for them to go,” he replied on Facebook to the malcontents.

Adie Knox Herman Recreation Complex is being used by the Unemployed Help Centre to store food collected during the Miracle drive last summer. There’s no outrage.

Community rinks at the WFCU Centre are being converted into a mass vaccination clinic. There’s no outrage.

When Windsor needed a field hospital, St. Clair College offered its sports complex.

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But there’s definitely some outrage about housing homeless people in the aquatic centre.

Some city, health and social services officials have been scrambling for most of the last 11 months, trying to protect their community from this virus. Concern is mounting about their mental health. People are starting to crack.

Dilkens will be clear about what he thinks about this kind of blowback in an open letter to the community this week.

We’ll get there, he wrote in the draft letter Wednesday. People will be vaccinated. Society will begin reopening. Arenas, pools and soccer fields will be busy again.

But until then, he wrote, the kind of talk he’s hearing is “unbecoming,” “callous” and “selfish.”

He also forwarded a particularly inappropriate email to his kids, writing, “I send this email chain to you as an example of what NOT to do, ever, in your life. Express your frustration, when appropriate, but do it in a positive way. Never like this.

“Love from your favourite father.”

ajarvis@postmedia.com