NAPANEE — A man who is housing homeless people on his Napanee property is once again in a battle with the municipality.

In 2018, the Town of Greater Napanee told Scott Drader to stop using his property as a trailer park for the homeless. Drader had been housing several people in mobile trailers parked on the property on Dairy Avenue.

That property is zoned light industrial, which means that Drader is breaking municipal bylaws by accommodating people in trailers on his land.

Despite letters from the municipality in 2018 telling him to stop and threatening legal action, Drader says he never stopped housing homeless people in trailers on his property.

Now, the municipality is once again telling him to cease and desist.

In a letter dated Nov. 15, 2019, the Town of Greater Napanee told Drader to cease using his property as a trailer park.

Referencing letters sent by the town to Drader last year, Michael Nobes, director of development services for the Town of Greater Napanee, pointed out that Drader was told in June 2018 that his property use was in violation of town zoning bylaws, and in November 2018 that if Drader did not bring his property into compliance, that the matter would be taken to Superior Court.

“You had subsequently ceased allowing individuals to reside in the trailers and removed some of the trailers from your property,” Nobes stated in the Nov. 15, 2019, letter. “This was an attempt to come into compliance with the Town’s Zoning Bylaw.

“It has now come to my attention that you have installed additional trailers on your property (and the adjacent private property), and individuals are living in the trailers. This is, again, a contravention of the Town’s Zoning Bylaw. It is apparent that you do not intend to cease using your property for an illegal use.”

Drader was given a deadline of Monday, Nov. 25, to have trailers removed from his property.

On that day, instead of moving trailers, Drader and a handful of supporters stood outside Greater Napanee Town Hall in protest.

“We want to make more awareness about the homeless situation here,” Drader said. “A lot of people in this town are blind. They don’t realize there’s a housing situation, a homeless situation. They don’t pay much attention to it. They see the people sitting on the streets, they call the town and complain and think it’s over with. They don’t realize it’s an epidemic in Canada.”

Drader currently has five trailers housing 13 people who are homeless on his property. Another seven individuals are living inside his house.

The collection of trailers — which Drader and others have called the Stepping Stone Homeless Shelter — housed people all last winter, Drader said.

“(The town) left me alone for a year,” he said during an interview with the Whig-Standard on Monday.

He attributes his ability to run under the radar to the fact that his Facebook group for the endeavour was shut down last winter. He reopened that page again in October of this year, and then received the letter from the town.

“I reopened it up three weeks ago because I started getting more and more people again needing coats and things,” he said. “I didn’t think anything would happen; they left me alone for year. As soon as I put that up, it started again.”

Greater Napanee Mayor Marg Isbester spoke with the demonstrators on Monday morning.

“I admire what Scott has done, but we cannot go into pure anarchy,” she said.

“Until you have a better option, support this man. Leave him alone,” Allan Vandebogart said to Isbester. “Let his friends, let his family, let the people help him.”

Isbester reiterated that she doesn’t make the rules, “but unfortunately I have to follow them.”

“You cannot (flout) the law,” she said. “You cannot (flout) rules that are in place. But there is always a way that we can try to get around it, not around it but through it.”

Isbester said that last winter, Prince Edward – Lennox and Addington Social Services helped place 10 or 11 individuals from the trailer setup who “jumped the cue” to get immediate housing.

She admits that more needs to be done to supply housing in the municipality, and told the group that she would like to sit down and discuss the issue with them, something she wishes Drader had done earlier.

“As Scott and I discussed earlier, had Scott come forward to us last year after Nov. 18 when we put all those people in housing, we probably wouldn’t be standing here,” she said. “Either, a) it would be located somewhere it should be, which would still be on services which would still be safe, and b) we might have been able to avoid all this.”

An online petition that currently has more than 1,300 signatures is urging municipal leaders to “act now to approve a minor variance of the zoning at 37 Dairy Ave., Napanee, Ontario, to rezone to a year-round trailer park or cabins.”

Isbester said she guaranteed that the change required would not just be a minor variance.

Drader plans to bring a delegation to town council during a regular meeting on Nov. 26.

mbalogh@postmedia.com