People in Disraeli encampment waiting for housing amid concerns about safety, bike chop shop in area

Cameron MacLean · CBC News

· Posted: Jun 19, 2025 6:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours ago

People surviving successful encampments on Winnipeg's Disraeli Freeway accidental they privation to find housing, but options are limited, adjacent arsenic a provincial outreach programme aims to determination radical retired of camps and into imperishable shelter. 

Meanwhile, constabulary accidental they are investigating reports of amerciable enactment successful the area, including a bicycle chop shop, and a cultural enactment that's been successful the country for decades is considering relocating.

Maxine Wood says she has been stateless for astir 4 years and has been staying successful an encampment connected a grassy fenced-in batch adjacent to the Manitoba Métis Federation gathering for astir 2 months.

More than 20 radical are surviving there, she said.

"Even if we effort to get a home, we can't. It's truthful hard," said Wood.

Lisa Gott, different idiosyncratic surviving successful the camp, said she has been successful the campy since the upwind warmed up.

"Everybody knows each different and we're each neighbours," she said.

But some she and Wood said they would similar to find housing, and person enactment workers trying to assistance them, but truthful acold nary 1 has offered them a spot to stay. 

"We request lodging — like, we request help," Wood said. "It hurts my bosom to adjacent accidental that, but we do. It's truthful bittersweet to spot these radical similar that."

Wood said she often worries astir the information of radical successful her camp, including those astatine hazard from taking drugs, and different enactment successful the area.

"Being here, it is truthful hectic. It's chaos astir here," she said.

In a abstracted encampment near Gott and Wood's, motorcycle parts and partially dismantled bicycles could beryllium seen betwixt tents and covering the unfastened crushed Wednesday.

In a little email statement, Winnipeg constabulary spokesperson Ally Cox told CBC News the constabulary work is investigating reports of a chop store successful the camp. 

$20M strategy

Earlier this year, the Manitoba authorities announced a two-year, $20-million strategy to extremity chronic homelessness. The Your Way Home program calls for the state to bargain lodging units, portion partnering with outreach agencies to spell campy to camp, moving radical into lodging and dismantling the camps. 

Tessa Blaikie Whitecloud, Premier Wab Kinew's elder advisor connected homelessness, told CBC outreach teams — including the Downtown Community Safety Partnership — have visited the Disraeli-area camps, portion Main Street Project has taken the pb connected trying to find lodging for the radical surviving there.

Main Street Project declined a petition for remark connected this story

The state is moving connected rebuilding the proviso of affordable housing, aft the erstwhile Progressive Conservative provincial authorities sold disconnected much societal lodging units than it built during its clip successful power, she said. 

"We're making those investments, and moving arsenic rapidly arsenic imaginable to determination radical from encampments into housing."

Since January, the state has housed 45 radical who were surviving successful encampments, said Blaikie Whitecloud.

Across the thoroughfare from the encampments, Oseredok Ukrainian Cultural and Educational Centre enforcement manager Brad Salyn said the enactment has had to inquire radical camping connected its spot to leave.

In the past, radical coming to the gathering person been assaulted, vehicles person been breached into and the gathering has been vandalized, helium said.

Although the enactment has been successful its location since the 1970s, Salyn said it's present reasoning astir relocating.

"There has been, you know, sizeable speech implicit the past decennary for sure, seeing however the information successful the country has gone. But determination has been a batch of pridefulness successful this country too, due to the fact that the enactment has been present for truthful long," helium said.

Blaikie Whitecloud said the information of Manitobans "is our fig 1 precedence — that includes those surviving successful encampments."

She besides said there are a fig of resources radical successful the country tin telephone if they person concerns astir the camps.

Anyone who sees idiosyncratic who appears to beryllium successful distress, but is not a hazard to different people, can telephone 211, the province's hotline for wellness and societal work information, she said, portion concerns astir imaginable transgression enactment oregon information owed to needles oregon different debris should beryllium made with the city's 311 service.

If someone whitethorn beryllium successful imminent danger, the telephone should beryllium made to 911, she said.