The issue of homelessness is front and centre for a Walkerville neighbourhood.
Residents on Moy Ave. are furious one of their neighbours offered her backyard to a group of homeless people after a police visit to the Street Help Homelessness Centre on Wyandotte St. E.
Street Help's Christine Wilson-Furlonger tells CTV News she's frustrated and disappointed after a visit from Windsor police on Friday following a complaint about shopping carts along the wall near the centre.
"None of us are comfortable with homelessness but, they weren't hurting anybody. They weren't doing anything wrong and that's the part that's most distressing," she says.
Police took no enforcement action — instead, staff at Street Help were told the shopping carts couldn't be left on private property.
Wilson-Furlonger says she wants the community to focus on the root cause of the issue.
"What I want to see is our community leaders stepping up and looking at this issue for what it is - a lack of housing. We need this housing so bad," says Wilson-Furlonger.
Hussein Abbas, with the El Mayor restaurant, claims people were setting up camp in his parking lot and shopping carts were scattered everywhere.
"A lot of my customers are even scared to even go in the parking lot. I've had a lot of customers asking me to please walk with them back to their cars. I mean I have no problems with them coming here eating and everything, but for them to come and set up tents in my parking lot, to cause problems with my customers, that I can't," he says.
In the aftermath of the incident, Kim McKintosh — who declined to be interviewed — opened her backyard at 838 Moy Ave. to those looking for a place to stay.
Police visited her house after complaints from the neighbours.
Joanne Messina has lived in the area for 30 years.
"I said the neighbours aren't going to be happy about this. This is making me afraid. We want help for them but I don't think we should have to give up our safety," says Messina.
The people have since left — some are back at street help. Katherine Misangyi-Faubert is one of them; she tells CTV News she's been homeless since May and dealing with the stigma has been at-times, overbearing.
"I'm having a hard time to adapt and it's getting harder with the way that people — not even the street people — the people that are supposed to be living a normal life, they're being more immature at the end of the day then the street people," she says.
McKintosh says police told her to have her backyard cleared by Monday.
— with files from CTV Windsor's Ricardo Veneza