‘A Better Tent City’ co-founder fears future under new ownership
Posted Jul 3, 2026 07:28:57 AM.
Last Updated Jul 3, 2026 12:28:17 PM.
Established in April of 2020, Kitchener’s ‘A Better Tent City’ (ABTC) has been a residential community for those experiencing homelessness for hundreds around the city. However, as announced in May by former ABTC Board chair Jeff Willmer, the organization “could no longer continue as a volunteer-led organization”.
In an attempt to keep the project alive, the Region of Waterloo stepped in in June, approving a plan to take over control and operations of A Better Tent City alongside operational group ‘The Working Centre’. The Working Centre is an Ontario not-for-profit organization that operates another shelter of a similar size to ABTC at 1001 Erbs Road.
Nadine Green is the long-time site coordinator of A Better Tent City. She co-founded the project alongside Ron Doyle and called upon her own personal experiences with homelessness to inform her support for those who have “fallen through the cracks”. Nadine herself has lived at the site alongside its residents since the project’s founding in 2020, while serving as coordinator.
Green says told 570NewsRadio that she was as surprised as anybody when ABTC’s board of directors announced in June that the board would be dissolving, with ownership and operations being passed on to the region.
“I had no idea,” said Green. She says just an hour prior to the official announcement, “I met with Jeff (Willmer). He broke the news to me, and I was like Are you kidding me?”
One of her initial concerns is about how the 1001 Erbs Rd shelter operates under the region with stricter oversight and tighter restrictions on having visitors and non-registered residents in the space. While only 55 residents officially live in the ABTC community, closer to 100 are projected to occupy the site when temporary visitors are included. Green says supporting visitors, and those who walk in without a full-time cabin, is at the core of what ABTC is meant to represent.
“We look out for people, and we look out for visitors. It’s like people in their regular home, if you have a visitor over, you treat your visitors well, and you make sure they’re happy until they leave.”
Aside from friends and family of existing residents, many visitors to ABTC have historically been those waiting for a full-time cabin of their own. Green says some would stay under the care of ABTC for months looking to become a full resident.
“They’ll wait for a year. The one gentleman just got a cabin, and he was waiting a year and a half for a cabin to be available. He just moved in months ago, and he’s very happy. So it’s a long wait, but people will wait.”
However, Green says this is not the operational style of region-run shelters that more stringently monitor the number of residents relative to the financial structure of budgeting for the space.
In addition to her fears of excluding visitors from the community, Nadine fears current or eventual residents of ABTC could feel ostracized or turned away by the “rules” she believes will be imposed going forward. Some of her concerns originate from a quote by Councillor Jan Liggett when the ownership change was first discussed in June.
“These are people who have no concern for rules or living within the confines of being a community, which we all adhere to,” said Liggett. “That’s what keeps us from being a third-world country”
Nadine says she fears ABTC has utilized a “trauma-free” approach, minimizing how much those experiencing homelessness need to consider and overcome when living at the site.
“We don’t have rules like, ‘ Oh, you can’t bring a friend over. Oh, you cannot stay overnight. Oh, you can’t have dinner past dinner time. Because our guys are trauma-free, we just make stuff tailored to them so that they don’t have to go through the problems of worrying about little things that they cannot live up to.”
Though Nadine says she has genuine care for the site and its residents, she will no longer be living at A Better Tent City when it’s handed over to region ownership.
“The Working Centre does great work, but how they’re going to run the site, I can’t live up to their expectations.”
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