How Somerset candidates would tackle safety, homelessness and the toxic drug crisis

In the heart of Ottawa, Somerset Ward is where many of the city’s biggest opportunities – and most difficult challenges – converge.

Home to Parliament Hill, Centretown, Chinatown and parts of downtown, Ward 14 is one of Ottawa’s most urban communities. It’s a place where residents can walk to work, run errands without getting into a car, grab a drink on a neighbourhood patio or bike along the Rideau Canal – all within minutes of home.

But it’s also a ward on the front lines of some of the most pressing issues facing Ottawa.

Homelessness and the toxic drug crisis have become increasingly visible on downtown streets. Residents and businesses have raised concerns about crime and public safety. Housing affordability remains a challenge in a ward where three-quarters of residents rent. At the same time, the future of public transit and efforts to bring more people and activity back downtown continue to shape conversations about what the neighbourhood will look like in the years ahead.

On Oct. 26, Somerset residents will decide who they want tackling those issues at City Hall for the next four years.

Five candidates are running to represent Ward 14, including incumbent Coun. Ariel Troster, who was first elected in 2022. Her four challengers – Nicholas Gollé, Dillon Anderson, Robert Dekker and Michael Tay – are each making the case for how they would approach a community that is both one of Ottawa’s most vibrant and one of its most complex.

Somerset’s demographics help distinguish it from much of the rest of Ottawa.

The ward is bounded by Parliament Hill and the Ottawa River to the north, the Queensway to the south, the Rideau Canal to the east and the Trillium Line to the west. With many daily necessities within walking or cycling distance, the ward offers the kind of 15-minute community lifestyle envisioned in Ottawa’s planning policies.

It is also the youngest ward in the city, with the 2021 census showing a median age of 35.2. However, seniors remain a significant part of the community, with 11,270 residents falling into that age group.

Somerset boasts an 80 per cent employment rate compared with the citywide average of 67 per cent. Average income is also slightly higher than the rest of the city, at $69,000 per year, while 70 per cent of residents have a post-secondary degree or diploma, compared with the citywide average of 55 per cent.

Perhaps one of the ward’s most striking differences is housing tenure. According to the 2021 census, 75 per cent of Somerset residents rent their homes, compared with 36 per cent citywide.

For all of its positive attributes, Somerset Ward is also facing significant challenges.

In May 2026, the Ottawa Police Service reported that the ward had the highest crime rate in the city for 2025, with a 1.5 per cent increase from the previous year.

Per 100,000 people, 15,824 crimes were reported in 2025 – a substantial difference from the rest of the city, which reported between 1,000 and 6,000 crimes per 100,000 people on average. Rideau-Vanier Ward was the exception to that range, with a crime rate similar to Somerset’s at 15,487.

Many say the pandemic was a significant turning point for the ward in terms of crime rates and public safety concerns. In the years since, safety issues have continued to plague the area, with advocates and community members saying the March 2025 closure of the Somerset West Community Health Centre safe consumption site led to a significant uptick in both crime and public drug use.

For the five candidates vying to represent Ward 14, questions surrounding public safety, homelessness, addiction and how the city provides services to its most vulnerable residents are among the defining issues of the campaign.

The Lookout sat down with each candidate to discuss those challenges, what they believe needs to change, and their plans for moving Somerset Ward forward.

Nicholas Gollé, who grew up in South Keys and Greely, has lived in Somerset Ward since 2018 – including through the pandemic years – and has seen a shift since then in both public sentiment and how politicians deal with complex problems.

“As the consequences of two years of stalled economic activity have resonated, and things have seemed only to get worse, clear signs of a general sense of anxiety have continued to grow,” said Gollé. “The economic anxiety comes, to some degree, from resource scarcity. We are all poorer now, and that leads us to zero-sum thinking.”