Natural disasters such as floods and wildfires have called upon community recreation facilities to be temporarily repurposed as operational centres or temporary housing, or replaced as recreation facilities themselves are lost during a crisis. Staff may be reassigned to cover emergency needs. Two examples from last year’s wildfires were that staff were called upon to search for homeless people in the woods in areas that may be in the path of the fire and to help run the operation centres and emergency shelters that were set up in temporarily repurposed community centres.
The housing crisis has called upon municipal recreation to reconsider the role that its indoor and outdoor spaces can play in the provision of emergency shelter and shortterm accommodation for unhoused people. Recreation’s role in housing has included addressing hygiene needs through the provision of showers, providing sites for warming and social connection, and providing space for encampments and interim housing via parks, and community centres. These supports provide a medium for connection with a larger community. Through all of this, recreation, with its reputation of being non-threatening and having no hidden agendas, has been called upon to be a focal point for respite, safety and community engagement.
An expertise that recreation has provided for many years, and may be even more compelling in this context and era, is the provision of play opportunities for children through playgrounds, programs and events. As housing solutions for families are undertaken, the recreation sector has an essential role to play in assuring that those needs, both in terms of quantity and quality, are fully considered. This is absolutely a role that we can and should play as long as the housing crisis returns.
It has been suggested that a policy focus on affordable communities could be more impactful than the current focus on affordable housing. In a crisis, it’s not unusual for respondents to focus on a narrow set of solutions, but in a chronic situation of need, a broader focus may be required to engage essential decision-makers and mobilize required resources. The benefits of taking a wider and longer-term approach include achieving higher levels of individual, family and community resiliency.
The current foci for the housing crises are on emergency shelters to serve those living rough or in tent communities, short-term housing for a growing population of unhoused people, and affordable housing options for people who are working but unable to afford to rent or buy a home. To imagine what a focus on affordable communities might look like, in addition to housing issues, think about food deserts that make if difficult to acquire healthy, affordable food; neighbourhoods lacking affordable recreation and community sport opportunities, safe active transportation routes, and good quality schools and libraries; and then consider the pressure on families that live in those communities.
In all of the crises mentioned above, human resources have been called upon to undertake new, unfamiliar, often temporary responsibilities to assist in crisis response. There are a number of possible implications for this situation, including the need for staff training in new skill areas, backfilling positions where long-term replacements are required, and management considerations for dealing with unfamiliar staff assignments, risk management decisions, and support for staff who may develop conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through encountering unfamiliar workplace hazards.