Fenced-off exhaust grate raises cold weather concerns

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This article was published 24/10/2023 (685 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WITH snow and cold forecast in the coming days, access to even the smallest sources of heat are vital for unhoused Winnipeggers, advocates agree.

A tall black fence surrounding a large grate alongside city hall, on the northwest corner of James Avenue, is now blocking one of those sources, community activist Vivian Ketchum said Monday.

Warm air regularly blows up from the grate and it became the site of a small homeless community tent encampment last winter.

“I know there was complaints about the homeless people hanging around city hall and grassroots members heard about it, and then security guards were having issues with the homeless people around city hall, camping out at city hall,” Ketchum said, adding she first noticed the fencing last week.

“And all of a sudden we see this black fence. Is that their idea of solving the problem?”

Ketchum said it has impacted her faith in the city’s recent efforts on issues affecting Winnipeg’s street population, especially with cold weather approaching.

“I know the mayor is talking about being all for helping the homeless people. The city putting up that fence contradicts his words and his actions.”

The goal of the fence, installed in the spring, however, is not to keep people off the grate, rather, to keep people from attempting to get under it, a City of Winnipeg spokesperson said.

“We can share that the fencing was installed for safety purposes and to prevent access to the building’s exhaust system,” Kalen Qually wrote in an email.

City councillors in the surrounding area are preparing for the worst as cold weather is set to soon blow in.

Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) said he hadn’t heard about the fence issue, but was skeptical of the possibility that the grate was being blocked off to keep people away from what could be a reprieve from the cold.

“It’s not the intention of the public service, nor of council, to just directly, maliciously, cut off somebody from keeping warm,” he said.

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Cold weather planning is currently underway at the city level, and Eadie said his ward will have extra emergency measures this year, including designating the Sergeant Tommy Prince Place recreation centre (90 Sinclair St.) as an emergency warming centre, should shelters fill up.

Eadie noted recent news that Winnipeg police had removed some community patrol officers from the North End and reassigned them to the downtown core was also a cause for concern in his ward, as those officers would previously check on people in the cold as part of their patrol.

“I guess we’ll be having the community police officers that used to work in the North End (who) will just be spending their time downtown talking to people, I don’t know,” he said.

Winnipeg Police Service Chief Danny Smyth has said the reassignment could last over a year as the service hires and trains 24 new officers.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.