Homelessness in Whitehorse is growing – and local lawmakers should be more tolerable of people camping in and around the city, council has heard.

Aja Mason, executive director of the Yukon Status of Women Council, and Nina McKinnon, the access co-ordinator for the Safe at Home Society, appeared before council at last Monday’s meeting.

In 2017, the city and other governmental and non-governmental organizations co-created Safe at Home, a community-based action plan to end and prevent homelessness, Mason told council.

She said the society has been building a list of names of people experiencing homelessness using the “build for zero model.”

The community of Medicine Hat, Alta. has brought homelessness down to zero using the model, Mason said.

At the beginning of each summer in Whitehorse, she noted, tenants are evicted from hotels and motels to make room for the influx of tourists.

This year, however, is undeniably different, she said.

McKinnon said the research shows that if somebody moves into chronic homelessness, they are much harder to house, and it’s harder to keep them housed.

Far more resources, she said, will be needed to help bring a tenant back into the community the longer he or she has experienced homelessness.

“Increasingly, we are seeing far more women and their children as the face of homelessness here,” she said.

McKinnon said at this time last year, there were 75 people on the “by name list” of those who were homeless.

By the end of last month, she said, the number was up by more than 175.

“As of today, there are 200 consenting individuals plus 60 children on the by-name-list,” she said. “One hundred and thirty-five of those individuals identify as Indigenous, 87 identify as female and 62 identify as Indigenous women.”

Mason said the growing number of those individuals who identify as homeless demonstrates the unprecedented and urgent nature of the situation.

Camping on the clay cliffs has long been a place of refuge for the homeless, but with each landslide, the risk to the city’s most vulnerable increases, she said.

Mason said the women’s council would like the city to allow camping on the open spaces around Robert Service Campground and the Takhini Arena as alternate accommodations.

They would also like to see certain open spaces like church parking lots and parcels of privately owned land enabled to house co- ordinated and centralized scattered camping, she said.

Mason said they would like to see bylaw officers and other front line city staff receive training in harm reduction, so that officers approach emergency situations with a compassionate response.

Ticketing and the forceful removal of persons and their belongings only criminalize people who are already marginalized, she said.

Mason said the Safe at Home Society has done much work with the built-for-zero model, and the society is more than happy to work with city council.