Sarnia’s housing fear versus what St. Thomas already proved

In Nathan’s latest column, a St. Thomas police chief’s clear support for Indwell and permanent supportive housing is set against Sarnia’s ongoing pattern of fear-driven delay, with evidence showing that housing people with wraparound care reduces police contacts and breaks the costly cycle of crisis response.

Police chiefs are not usually the ones pointing out the failures of reactive enforcement.

Yet Chief Marc Roskamp of St. Thomas recently sat down for an interview and said something that should make every reactionary NIMBY and tight-fisted politician in Sarnia squirm: Indwell and permanent supportive housing are crucial to community safety, and refusing to support them is completely nonsensical.

Roskamp didn’t mince words. He called Indwell one of his top partners, noted that people given a home and wraparound health supports are vastly less likely to interact with police, and openly admitted he doesn’t understand communities that fight these projects.

This is not an activist lecturing from a podium. This is a 30-year law enforcement veteran looking at his own budget, his own officers, and his own streets, and stating the obvious: policing social breakdown after it happens is a catastrophic failure of basic policy.

The Human Fear vs. The Sarnia Reality

Having sat in the council chamber facing the wall of panic whenever supportive housing comes up, I know the emotion driving the opposition. People fear losing quiet streets, safety, or property values. That fear is real. The political conclusions drawn from it are destructive.

Feeding that fear in Sarnia produces the exact nightmare people claim to hate.

When politicians and neighbourhood groups block supportive housing because they’re afraid of “those people” moving in, unhoused community members don’t vanish. They are forced to live rough in parks, doorways, and alleys—desperate and unsupported. When those conditions inevitably bleed into public safety issues, City Hall’s default response is to throw tens of millions more at aggressive policing to temporarily push human misery out of sight.

It’s a revolving door designed to generate fear, drain public coffers into a $38-million-and-growing police budget, and solve absolutely nothing.

The Data Sarnia Ignores

Chief Roskamp isn’t operating on a hunch; he’s reading the balance sheet.

In St. Thomas, people housed in Indwell properties saw a 30 percent drop in police calls compared with when they were on the street. Downtown calls for service dropped 14 percent, drug-related calls plunged, and encampments were prevented not through sweeps and tickets, but by putting roofs over people’s heads.

The broader evidence is overwhelming:

• The Denver Social Impact Bond study showed supportive housing led to a 34 percent reduction in police contacts and a 40 percent reduction in arrests.

• Canada’s national At Home/Chez Soi trial demonstrated that Housing First models stabilize complex mental health and addiction crises while reducing emergency-room visits and justice-system involvement.

When someone is housed and wrapped in care, they stop “spiraling”—Roskamp’s word—and they stop ending up in the back of a cruiser.

Stop Managing Decay—Build the Alternative

In St. Thomas, the Chamber of Commerce and municipal leaders invite other cities to take a page out of their playbook.

In Sarnia, the pattern has been bureaucratic stalling, bad-faith debates about “fit,” and demands for “special safety plans” that treat unhoused neighbours as inherent security risks. The result is predictable: neighbours freeze in tents, overdose deaths mount, and the police department asks for millions more to manage the wreckage.

Real community safety is not built inside a police fortress. It is built when people have roofs, food, and consistent human care.

If a 30-year police chief can look at supportive housing and say he doesn’t understand why any city would reject it, then Sarnia’s remaining excuses aren’t just thin—they’re indefensible. The playbook is working an hour away down the 402. It’s time to stop letting fear write housing policy and start building the alternative right here.

Editor's Note: earlier versions of this article had the improper spelling of Chief Marc Roskamp and has been updated.