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July 12, 2022 • 1 day ago • 2 minutes reading • 16 comments As traffic passes in both directions, on Tuesday, July 12, 2022 a panhandler is on a boulevard in the middle of Ouellette Avenue on the street Wyandotte in the center of Windsor. Photo of Dax Melmer / Windsor Star
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At 15, Christine Wilson-Furlonger begged for money to feed off a Big V on Ouellette Avenue, thankfully the police and business owners rolled their eyes.
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After learning that the city will study a partial ban on manipulation at the request of a councilor, the now-adult Street Help administrator told the Star that the ban would have a devastating effect on the poorest residents. of Windsor.
“It’s discouraging that we can’t see this kind of attack on homeless people,” Wilson-Furlonger said Tuesday.
During Monday’s board meeting, the Neighborhood Council 1. Fred Francis asked staff to investigate the feasibility of a regulation banning handling in residential, commercial and tourist neighborhoods. At the request of Mayor Drew Dilkens, boulevards and street dividers were added to the list.
“It’s something we see constantly,” Francis told Star after the meeting. “It’s time to get back to our city center. It’s time to get other parts of our city back. We can’t stand idly by.”
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Francis is not the first Windsor councilor to try to limit manipulation. When Dilkens took the seat of Ward 1 in 2014, he asked the administration for a report on the possibility of establishing a tamper-free area in the city center.
After consulting with legal advisers, city staff at the time suggested that an anti-panhandling regulation would be vulnerable to constitutional challenges.
This report noted that the Safe Ontario Streets Act of 1999 already prohibits aggressive handling. Anyone who violates the Act can be fined a minimum of $ 500 for a first offense and up to $ 1,000 for subsequent offenses.
On Monday, Francis said he anticipates that an ordinance banning manipulation could address human rights and Supreme Court challenges. That is why he has asked the City Council for a report that identifies what can and cannot be done.
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“There are a lot of people who think that the city council is not doing anything. Within the law, there are certain things we cannot do, ”he said.
“There are areas that people are manipulating and they shouldn’t be doing. It’s a nuisance and taking businesses away from the city center. It’s driving tourists away from the city center.”
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Francis said while listening to residents’ complaints, he is also seeing the problem first hand, with malefactors “almost settling” at busy intersections and knocking on the windows of vehicles stopped at red traffic lights.
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Wilson-Furlonger’s charity relies on donations to support Windsor’s homeless people: “a different kind of manipulation,” he said. He said it is “typical” of the council to “focus on the poorest of the poor, the victims the easiest to target,” and said the council would better serve the community by creating housing.
“Attacking panhandling, what good will it do? It will be a great waste of police resources,” he said. “Are we going to take these people to court?”
When Wilson-Furlonger spoke in his youth, “I had no choice,” he said. “I became a productive member of my community; we have to be careful judging.”
tcampbell@postmedia.com
twitter.com/wstarcampbell
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