St. Stephen appears on the verge of announcing a "warming centre" to save people without homes from freezing this winter. Mat Rouleau, a member of the Unsheltered Working Group, stated at a public meeting on October 11 that he planned to meet with an engineer the next day to look at a yet to be announced location for "a stop-gap for this winter" to be opened within a month while work continues on longer-term solutions to addictions, mental health issues and homelessness.
      The working group headed by town Councillor Vic Thiessen came together following reports of people living in tents in public parks and elsewhere after the apartment building at 9 Schoodic Street was shut down in August under New Brunswick's Safer Communities and Neighbourhoods (SCAN) program allowing the authorities to deal with complaints of illegal drugs and other criminal activity.
      Rouleau spoke at a pubic meeting called by a concerned citizens group formed last year when "the problem was just emerging," according to retired teacher Ron Joudrey, who moderated the 90-minute session at the St. Croix Church. The concerned citizens group urged the authorities to act on continual disturbances at certain apartment buildings well known to the local RCMP. Pressure from the concerned citizens group possibly contributed to the decision to act on 9 Schoodic Street under SCAN, Joudrey said.
      The tents in the park ensued, leading to the working group headed by Thiessen. The working group organized a survey that identified "about 30-ish people" without homes, according to Rouleau.
      About 40 people attended the public meeting but, citizen Nathan Scott noted, not one of them homeless. "None of us have ever been homeless, and there's not a homeless person here," he said. Scott witnessed the mayhem at 9 Schoodic over the months leading up to action under SCAN. "What concerned me the most is the violence, because I thought for sure someone was going to get beaten to death because of the fights out in front of that building," he said. Others spoke of the deficiencies in terms of fire safety, cleanliness and state of repair at some properties.
      "We've got to have a heart, but we've got to have a community," Scott said, explaining that people must live by society's rules. "But the thing is, they are human beings."
      On the day before the meeting, October 10, the Canadian Thanksgiving, a 20-something lady crawled out of a tent behind the Loyalist Burial Ground on King Street when a visiting reporter announced himself. She motioned the visitor to sit in a lawn chair while she sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the tent door.
      Another tent stood a few feet away. There was a stack of empty tanks for the propane cooker they used. A big beach-type umbrella lying on the ground provided some cover for socks hung up to dry. The charred remains of what was possibly a wooden box attested to a fire for cooking and keeping warm. There was a bicycle laying on its side. Trees surrounding the grass behind the gravestones might create a certain sense of seclusion, but in the middle of the town close to businesses and homes.
      Her boyfriend, whom she also called her fiancé, had gone to the public Thanksgiving dinner at Neighbourhood Works, formerly known as Charlotte County Group Homes Inc., now headquartered at the former Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church on Union Street. "My fiancé is bringing stuff back. I'm just keeping an eye on our stuff at the tent," she said.
      The day before, they went to an event sponsored by Kings Church at the old Border Area Community Arena. "They had a bunch of food all made and a bunch of coats and blankets and mittens and stuff to give away to everyone," she says, adding, "It was awesome. It was really kind. I thought it was amazing."
      She stayed with people at 9 Schoodic Street "off and on" when she was not staying with her grandmother. "Quite a few of us were just staying there -- [in other people's apartments]. There haven't been many rents available, especially low income, and this town is full of low-income families, and the rents around here are just outrageous, and nobody can afford them." Landlords want $800 or $900 a month for an unheated bachelor apartment in St. Stephen, she said. Speakers at the public meeting said that single people on provincial social assistance get $532 a month.
      She and her boyfriend moved into their new digs behind the historic graveyard after 9 Schoodic Street closed - when it was still summer. She picks up mail and sometimes does laundry at her grandmother's residence and sometimes stays in her grandmother's basement. "But I got really sick after awhile. It's not really the healthiest situation; plus, her health isn't really good, either," she says, adding later, "I figured it would be less stressful if I wasn't there."
      Partway through this interview a man announcing himself as Anthony Lawrence Defazio arrived. He lives in the other tent with his father, the woman explains.
      How is he doing? "Oh, not too bad. It kind of gets bad, it gets good," he replies. He has been living here since August when 9 Schoodic Street closed. "Yeah, stayed there for years," he says. He calls for someone in his tent, but the woman says he is not there, possibly picked up for missing a court date or something.
      "I was on the news, too," Defazio says, explaining that he was the one caught on camera with his bong when police arrived at 9 Schoodic Street. The woman on the grass lit a bong during the interview. "Most of us just smoke weed, normally," she says.
      "This is pretty well all we've got for now, until we can figure something," she says. "We've had a few run-ins with some teenagers over in the parking lots and stuff but, other than that, not really much trouble," she said.
      This statement took more meaning when the reporter returned the next day before the public meeting that evening. Defazio and the woman were gone but Paul Maguire, 30, and Amanda Middlemiss, 34, were there, waiting for the people living here to return.
      The site had obviously been trashed since the reporter's visit the day before. The woman's tent, now upside down, looked damaged. Maguire and Middlemiss blamed it on the teenagers, but how they knew this was not immediately clear. At the public meeting that night, RCMP Sgt. Scott MacKenzie replied to a reporter's question that a homeless person whose tent gets trashed can file a complaint with the police.
      Maguire and Middlemiss did not believe that the people tenting behind the graveyard knew about the vandalism. They thought that the RCMP had arrested someone from the Defazio tent, again, possibly for missing a court date.
      Maguire says he has been homeless since April, when new owners bought the building in which he lived on Church Street. "The new owners had management, and management didn't like me, and I got pushed out the door," he says. He had never been more than a week late with his rent the whole three years he lived there, he says.
      He was not working. "Trying to come off the drugs is what I was doing, and I was doing good until I got kicked out on the street." He had a court date for drug charges.
      Middlemiss returned home to St. Stephen as a result of domestic violence in St. George where she lived. "Then my main goal was to get my son out of Schoodic Street, and then Schoodic Street shut down. I felt guilty about that, but it wasn't my fault," she says without explaining further.
      Middlemiss and Maguire confirmed that, aside from the tenants of record and couch surfers, some people slept in the hallways at 9 Schoodic Street. People coming out of apartments in the morning would find people "sleeping in a hallway with a blanket or just a coat," Maguire says.
      Middlemiss confirmed that homeless people would spend the night in the vacant 19th century wooden building that most recently housed Greco Pizza. The building burned on September 19. An excavator demolished what was left of the structure on Tuesday, October 11, but MacKenzie says the fire is still under investigation.
      Maguire and Middlemiss -- who are not romantically involved with each other -- live along with others in a house on Pleasant Street with wood heat and electricity, but no water.
      Sgt. MacKenzie, addressing the public meeting, described drugs, especially the arrival of crystal meth, as "frightening," also "scary" and "threatening."
      "Drugs are very easy to come by. Enforcement is very hard. We are not winning the war on drugs," he says. The British Columbia government is looking at legalizing small amounts of crystal meth, cocaine and heroin as "harm reduction," he says. "Why target people that are addicted to a [substance] who have no option to get out of it?"
      Some people proposed low-cost housing models tied in with addiction, mental health and life-skills counselling. Others spoke of the conflicts and fears in some neighbourhoods and of not feeling safe in their own homes. MacKenzie said that police are not social workers, but he wishes that officers had somewhere to send people who call in the wee hours saying they need a tent or blankets.
      Thiessen, who could not attend the public meeting as he had to teach a university course that night, said in an earlier interview that homelessness is a worldwide issue that has arrived in the St. Croix Valley. Just about everyone at the public meeting agreed with Rouleau that, with the season advancing, the community must take some stop-gap measure quite soon.
      "I hope so," the lady sitting cross-legged on the grass said the day before her tent got trashed. "I'm sure we'll all figure it out soon, I hope. Got to keep praying, day by day, do our best to stay strong. That's what most of us have got to do."