Good morning.
Wendy Cox in Vancouver this morning.
The crises of housing, mental health and addictions intertwine in a Vancouver waterfront park, along a rail corridor in Edmonton, and on a wide, grassy boulevard near downtown Victoria. In those places, as well as dozens more across Canada, people with precious few other places to go have pitched tents, leaving all three levels of government in a quandary about what to do when the encampments become entrenched, dangerous and squalid.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s housing advocate concluded what civic governments and encampment residents already know: Tents are not a safe or sustainable solution for housing, and people living in them face risks including water, food and sanitation. In a report, Marie-Josée Houle has called on the federal government to develop a national plan to deal with what she writes amounts to a human-rights crisis.
“This national crisis calls for a national response,” she said, suggesting the national plan should be in place by Aug. 31.
Among other things, the report recommends the federal government ban municipalities from forcing encampment occupants to leave federal lands. Municipalities should prioritize the human rights of encampment residents and the role of police and bylaw officers “should be de-emphasized,” she writes.
In response, federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser said the federal government is working on a plan to support people who don’t have a place to live and are precariously housed.
Fraser’s non-committal response to Houle’s recommendations is not surprising. Clearing out homeless encampments, such as Edmonton did last month, has resulted in protracted court skirmishes and angry protests.
The encampment removal in Edmonton prompted a spat between Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and the provincial government with Sohi arguing Edmonton’s social services and affordable housing supply simply haven’t kept up with the city’s growing population of people without homes. The province’s minister in charge rejected Sohi’s complaints, saying there was room. Jason Nixon rejected Sohi’s request for an emergency meeting.
The City of Vancouver moved abruptly last August to clear out dozens of tents that had sprung up since last January along the sidewalk on East Hastings after weeks of complaints from nearby businesses. The city’s police and fire chiefs maintained the “entrenched” camp was resulting in violence, fires and general hazard as combustibles were piled against buildings. The clear-out took place even as Mayor Ken Sim acknowledged there wasn’t enough shelter space for everyone.
“We’re not solving homelessness today,” Sim said.
Premier David Eby said then there was enough shelter space. But he acknowledged in remarks in November that there is no uniformity in how cities and the provincial government should manage tent encampments. While the East Hastings encampment was cleared out, tents pitched in a park near the port were not. In Victoria, the city has some parks designated for tents and some that aren’t.
“One of the challenges we have run into is inconsistent decisions from courts about what the standard is that a local government has to meet to be able to decamp,” Eby said. “What is the level of shelter that is required? Do individuals need to be, and to what degree do their individual needs need to be accommodated?”
The B.C. government introduced legislation the premier said will offer some clarity. Under Bill 45, encampment residents can’t be asked to move unless overnight shelter with a bathroom and a shower on hand is available. The shelter must provide at least one meal and have staff on hand.
Municipalities have decried the legislation as unworkable, saying it will in effect bar municipalities from clearing out encampments that have become hazardous. For its part, the First Nations Leadership Council in B.C. also wants the legislation shelved, saying it won’t protect encampment residents from being forced into inadequate shelters.
The federal housing advocate doesn’t provide details of how a federal strategy would bring together all the disparate parties struggling with solutions to encampments. With provincial governments responsible for delivering housing, health and social services, and with civic governments responsible for delivering policing and fire safety, a national strategy that attempts to address the problem in a uniform way across the country seems hard to fathom.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.
Wendy Cox