The City of Peterborough will not be funding OneCity’s Trinity nightly drop-in program and daytime operations beyond 2026, council decided at a July 2nd meeting

The decision came at the end of a five-hour city council meeting initially scheduled for June 30th, which was postponed due to a power outage in council chambers.

The Trinity Community Centre offers the only low-barrier access overnight shelter program in the city, with a network of housing, healthcare, and addiction support available on-site. At a June 23rd general committee meeting, council recommended against the renewal of its funding, citing a lack of “accountability” from Trinity and purported disruptions to its neighbouring community.

After the presentation of the city’s corporate awards of excellence, council received delegations from members of the public about the night’s motions. Rob Hailman spoke to one of the many hot topics of the last general committee in his delegation—the first of fourteen that night—about the 2026 city budget.

Hailman began by speaking about Leal’s slow reneging on his promise to not use the strong-mayor powers granted to him by the provincial government.

“After directing staff to plan for a 10% increase in police budget, Mayor Leal, you spoke at the Police Board and requested to suggest a 15% increase. So already, as I say, use of strong mayor powers is failing to deliver a clear process or better budget.”

“All that budgeting by decree … has not resulted in a more effective process or in better budgets, said Hailman.

The next two delegations served as a brief extension to the lengthy debates on June 23rd regarding a zoning by-law amendment to build an eight-storey residential complex at 1341 Water Street. On one side, neighbouring resident Dennis Carter-Edwards stated his opposition to the project.

“The eight story building will be way out of proportion to the size and scale of existing residential units in surrounding neighborhood,” said Carter-Edwards

On the other side, Eldon Theodore, a partner at the planning firm behind the project, MHBC Planning Ltd., attempted to clear up some questions posed the week prior, particularly relating to the ambiguous aims of the project, which seemed to oscillate between student and rent-market housing. 

“They have made the determination that, yep, they're going to make that commitment. It is going to be a five-storey market rent building,” Otonabee Ward Councillor Lesley Parnell later told councillors.

Council still elected to defer the by-law amendment until they feel the applicant has a clearer idea of what to do with the property.

Council received a delegation on the Canada-Ukraine twin cities program to promote cultural collaborations between municipalities in both countries, which they voted unanimously to consider, before hearing the first of ten delegates on agenda item 13q, pertaining to the discontinuation of Trinity’s funding.

This item was an amended recommendation to increase funding to the city’s Housing Stability Fund and to expand the 24/7 capacity of the Brock Mission, which provides shelter service to people experiencing homelessness under the condition that they remain sober while living there. Notably absent was the increase in financial support for Trinity which staff had originally recommended to council.

Auden Palmer, the Director of Outreach Services at One City, which operates the Trinity community centre and the programming in question, spoke to council about the necessity of the services they provide.

“When these services disappear, the people using them don't. They move into parks, doorways, alleys and emergency rooms,” Palmer told council.

They went on to address one of the most-repeated complaints about the Trinity program, namely its hyper-visibility on Reid Street. 

“When people have everything that they own with them, it can look messy, it can look dishevelled,” Palmer said, but “it would be inhumane to ask people not to have any personal belongings.”

“These programs shouldn’t have to exist,” they said in closing. “And yet, they’re necessary.”

Resident Jessica Correa spoke about the vitality of low-barrier access shelters.

“These programs serve people who can't access traditional shelters due to trauma, substance use and other systemic barriers,” she told councillors.

Resident Danielle Turpin, who organized a large “rally for dignity” outside of city hall on June 30th, spoke about the consequences of cutting Trinity’s programming.

“The future without this programming is bleak,” she said. “It means women returning to abusers. It means more people living on the streets, in their cars and in unsafe conditions. It means indigenous people will be further displaced by society when we should be focusing on reconciliation.” 

She defended Trinity against councillors who had called it a “bad apple” and criticized Brock Mission’s supposed “gold standard.”

“Trinity and One City have a place because these people aren't able to access those gold standards that you guys speak of. They're not able to use those services. I want a place that's going to be safe for everybody,” Turpin said.

Resident Ashley Safar spoke from dual perspectives, both as the Peterborough Community Health Centre’s Executive Director and an advocate for Indigenous people in the community.

“It's important to recognize that the over-representation of Indigenous people experiencing homelessness is not coincidental,” she said. “It's a direct result of the ongoing impacts of colonialism, systemic discrimination and intergenerational trauma.” 

“It is disheartening to hear suggestions that this is not the city's responsibility,” Safar continued. “When municipalities signal that the needs of Indigenous residents fall outside their jurisdiction, it reinforces the very exclusion and marginalization that have contributed to these inequities.”

Town Ward Councillor Alex Bierk asked Safar about the impact of the loss of Trinity on community organizations like hers.

“We need to collaborate with folks like Trinity to be able to be there and meet people where they're at, to be able to assess wounds, to be able to do assessment work,” she told Bierk.

“Not being able to do that will have a huge impact on our outreach efforts and ability to seek those people out,” said Safar. “If they're not in a space and they're wandering the community as a whole, [that] makes it much more difficult to engage in that work.”

Doctor Thomas Piggott, Medical Officer of Health and CEO of Peterborough Public Health, spoke to council over the phone.

“Apologies that I couldn’t join you in person tonight,” he said. “I've just stepped out of the emergency department, bad timing with the one shift a month, I still help out, and it's very busy.”

“We've identified at least 47 individuals over the three years from [the fourth quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2024] who have died and are experiencing homelessness, and that is a significant number, but it's also likely very underreported, because the coroner service only investigates some 20% of deaths, and so there are probably many more people who we do not know,” he said.

The next three delegates spoke from the opposite position, pleading in favour of cutting Trinity’s funding.

Danielle Hughes, a neighbour of the community centre, said that “since One City has opened, [her and her family’s] lives have changed substantially, and not for the better.”

“It seems every time we walk past there, there are things I don't want my eight year old to see,” she said. “If you're ever on [the Facebook group] Catch a Car Hopper Peterborough, you'll see that cell phones and other many expensive items have been located there.” 

“It seems most of the members that I see at Trinity have a ‘don't care’ attitude.”

Resident George Jonathan spoke about his own experience of homelessness.

“It sounds hard to say this, but I think people will just have to figure it out on their own. That's what I had to do,” Jonathan told council.

“They can't always just be supported by the city,” he told the horseshoe. “It's sad, I guess, but life is hard.”

After three hours of delegations, council moved onto discussing the main motion to invest $250,000 into increasing the city’s Housing Stability Fund (HSF) and $285,600 to expand Brock Mission’s 24/7 capacity, which Ashburnham Ward Councillor Keith Riel immediately moved to amend. 

His amendment sought to restore the full scope of funding recommended by staff on June 23rd, including more funds for the daytime hours and nighttime drop-in programs at Trinity.

“I am finding it hard to understand why half of my colleagues have voted against helping the homeless and the marginalized,” said of the outcome of last week’s vote.

“I have heard comments from some of them that ‘we have done enough,’” he told council. 

“‘We have spent enough of the taxpayers' money on this issue.’ ‘If we build it, more will come.’ I've read on social media ‘tell them to get a job.’ ‘You're milking the system.’ ‘They're lazy.’ ‘They're just looking for a handout.’ Did you ever try to get a job when you're living in a shelter?”

“If you do not support this plan, you will undo all the great work that this council has done,” Riel said.

“We will see an increase in tenting in our parks, our public spaces and our private land, calls for service to police, fire, paramedics and the business to PRHC [the Peterborough Regional Health Centre], and you've heard about how the cost to hospitalize somebody will increase, which will only add an added cost to the taxpayers. There will be an additional influx of people downtown pushing shopping carts, and an increase in the decay in our downtown core,” he pressed.

“I can guarantee you what's going to happen when this service stops next April is that you are going to see hundreds of people that have had a place to go to find resources and their basic needs met, not have that in place anymore,” Bierk said.

“I guarantee there will be an encampment like you have never seen in the park by Reid street. It's already there, and it will grow exponentially.”

Northcrest Ward Councillor Andrew Beamer spoke next, expressing frustration with comments made by delegates earlier.

“Some of the comments from the delegates this evening were a little bit disappointing,” said Beamer. “We're a very, very compassionate community, and I think it's important to thank the residents for their compassion.”

“There is a significant cost to the property taxpayers for all these social supports that we provide. In 2025, we spent 11.1 million. Now most of that was provincial, but it's still taxpayer money, 11.1 million for homelessness services for approximately 300 people,” he said.

“What I'm hearing from many residents in the community is they are very compassionate, but they have a limit,” he said, before speaking on the impact of Trinity on their surrounding community.

“I want to speak about … accountability at Trinity,” Beamer said. “The city has generously funded One City, but this organization has not put any effort into being a good neighbor to those who own businesses in the area or live there.”

Beamer’s wardmate, Dave Haacke, echoed his frustrations at the comments made by delegates earlier in the night.

“I’ve got to say, I don’t consider myself to be a bad person,” Haacke said. “Yet that's what I'm being told, if I'm not going to support this, which I'm not going to.”

He said the city should prioritize treatment over housing for those living in the streets, comparing them to his grandmother, who has Alzheimer’s.

“If I was responsible for her and let her march into the streets, I'd end up in jail. But for some reason, we're okay as a community to allow people that can't make informed decisions for themselves out on the street.”

Councillors Kevin Duguay, Lesley Parnell, Don Vassiliadis and Mayor Leal expressed a similar position, while Monaghan ward councillor Matt Crowley voiced a reluctant support for Riel’s motion. Ultimately, Riel’s amendment was lost, with only Baldwin, Bierk, Crowley, Lachica and his support.

Crowley and Bierk then put up two amendments of their own, Crowley’s to put out a request for proposals from organizations which might be able to provide low-barrier shelter space in Trinity’s stead, and Bierk’s to look into greater funding options for the city’s Wolfe Street modular housing program. 

The main motion to reinstate funding for homelessness program save for Trinity carried unanimously along with Crowley’s amendment. Bierk’s own amendment carried 6-5 as a separate motion, with Mayor Leal, councillors Duguay, Baldwin, Riel, Lachica and himself in favour.

After some cries of “shame” from the gallery, the meeting was swiftly adjourned, though not before councillor Parnell could warn one attendee decrying her opposition to funding Trinity that she was committing a “repeated offense against a female councillor.”

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