Cambridge encampment to remain in place until next court hearing

A superior court has temporarily blocked the eviction of a Cambridge, Ont. encampment while it hears the case for an emergency injunction against the city.

Waterloo Region Community Legal Services filed the injunction on behalf of two residents living at the encampment near Branchton Road, behind the PetroCanada gas station on Dundas Street.

The matter was adjourned in court Thursday morning.

Bylaw officials had served Michael Nanos, 52, and Joseph Micallef, 68, a notice of eviction that would have taken effect on Thursday.

“I’m not leaving,” Micallef told CTV News Thursday. “If they’re going to take me out of here, then they’re going to take me out of here in handcuffs.”

Micallef says he was surprised when they got the notice.

“We don’t give anybody a hard time. They don’t give us a hard time.”

“Where are we to go? Leave and go where? We just get passed down the road until we get to be somebody else’s problem,” he said.

Shannon Down, a lawyer from Waterloo Region Community Legal Services says Waterloo Region municipalities are still grapping with how to deal with homelessness.

Down says her team took on this case because there was no other attempt to come to an agreement to stop the eviction.

“We really felt we had to take that step,” she said.

At Thursday morning’s hearing, lawyers for the city asked the court to adjourn the matter until sometime next week.

Down told the court they agreed to the adjournment, under conditions the residents could stay until the next hearing.

“Our clients who are living in the encampment can stay there with their current set-up that they have and sort of be left undisturbed,” she said.

Both sides agreed the city will not prevent the plaintiffs from staying at or accessing the encampment site, and the plaintiffs will not erect any new structures at the site other than tents.

If the city decides to remove garbage in the meantime, it will only be allowed to remove items the residents identify as garbage.

The next court date has not yet been set.