New guidance urges cities to treat encampment residents with dignity, respect
Providing access to essential services among recommendations
Municipal governments should rethink their approach to homeless encampments, according to new guidance from a national working group.
The guidance attempts to outline best practices for the relationship between cities and their homeless populations, as a growing number of encampments appear in communities across Canada.
Developed by the National Working Group on Homeless Encampments — a collection of mayors, academics, encampment residents and others — the report is meant to help municipalities advocate for affordable housing and support people living in tents and other temporary shelters.
It urges municipalities to ensure all viable housing alternatives are explored before considering evictions. It also says encampment residents should follow a community-led safety plan and have access to essential services like clean drinking water.
"As a bottom line, you have to interact with people living in encampments in a way that ensures their dignity and that treats them with respect," said Leilani Farha, director of The Shift, the human rights organization that convened the working group.
'We have to push for better conditions'
Farha, the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, told CBC's Ottawa Morning the guidance takes a "very different approach" from the status quo.
The City of Ottawa estimates about 275 people are now sleeping outside, and projections suggest as many as 187 will be left without shelter this winter.
For many left out in the cold, encampments may be the only remaining option.
In an email, the city said it has responded to 432 encampments since January and has "resolved" 370 of them, though it did not define what "resolved" meant.
By comparison, it responded to and resolved 343 encampments in all of 2022 and just 248 in 2021.
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The growing scale of the problem, Farha said, demands a more constructive solution.
"Saving human lives and ensuring dignity is so important that we have to push for better conditions in encampments," she said.
The 'law and order' perspective
Farha said municipalities often view encampments from the perspective of "law and order" and consider tents pitched on city property to be trespassing, leading to forcible and sometimes violent evictions.
That approach, she said, wastes resources through policing costs and litigation.
The City of Kingston, for example, recently sought a court order to evict people living at an encampment in the city's Belle Park.
Residents of that encampment are still awaiting the judge's decision, but a previous case found the Region of Waterloo could not evict people from an encampment in downtown Kitchener, Ont., because it would violate their Charter rights.
"I'd rather see resources being used differently to stabilize this population and then move toward getting them into long-term affordable housing," Farha said.
Kale Brown, the City of Ottawa's manager of homelessness programs and shelters, said in an email the municipality works with its partners to provide personalized outreach to people in encampments.
"The decision to dismantle an encampment is only made once all efforts to support the person have been exhausted," he said.
Brown listed common reasons why the city would do that, including residents using combustible fuels or setting up tents too close to building entrances, emergency exits, vulnerable populations or public parks.
An Ottawa police spokesperson said officers can play a supporting role in removing someone from a property and work "to facilitate their departure in a peaceful manner."
Both police and bylaw services have been proactive in trying to help encampment residents find housing, said Peter Tilley, CEO of the Ottawa Mission.
But Tilley said not every city takes the same approach, and responding to the issue can overwhelm smaller municipalities in particular.
A template for local governments to reference, he said, would be a valuable resource.
"There's just no housing out there," Tilley said. "Winter is coming, so these encampments do come up. And they're survival."
Risk of 'normalizing' encampments
Despite the need to improve living conditions in encampments, Farha said she recognizes the risk of "normalizing" their very existence.
"It will never be good enough for people to live in tents in parks or on concrete parking slabs in the ninth or 10th largest economy in the world," she said.
Tilley shares the concern, noting encampments can become "comfort communities" for those who live in them — but also havens for predators and drug dealers.
Compared to supervised injection sites, he said, tents are dangerous places for people to use street drugs.
"These do become home, they do become community for people, they do become a sense of belonging with others who are in the same predicament as them — people who can share stories and understanding," he said.
"But unfortunately, they're not the ideal solution."
Farha said those conditions are precisely why municipalities must bring encampment residents into the decision-making process.
"Remember that people living in homelessness are fighting for their lives, and they have expertise in doing so," she said.
"This is really a starting point, but I really hope it could become some baseline of standards."