St. Thomas Mayor Joe Preston says the plight of the homeless is still one of those issues that keeps him awake at night.

“But it wakes me up a lot less often than it used to,” he said.

As winter approaches, he says he’s confident they have enough shelter space that no person in St. Thomas will be forced to live in in tents.

While there is still homelessness in the Elgin County city south of London, Preston is optimistic that in the next year or so, the current number of unhoused people can be reduced from about 100 to zero.

St. Thomas, population 46,000, faces the same issues every big, medium and small community across the country is wrestling with: housing shortages, an opioid epidemic and groups of vulnerable people without shelter.

But St. Thomas is on the cusp of having shelter f

See Full Page