Be angry at encampments, not people who live there
Tent communities expose our failure to act, Marie-Josée Houle writes.
People in Canada have every right to be angry about the tent encampments popping up across this country.
But no one should be angry at the people living in them.
As federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser said recently, responding to my new report on encampments, “I think it's a generational moral failure that there are people who are sleeping without a roof over their head in a country as wealthy as Canada.”
People experiencing homelessness are living in tents on the street because they have nowhere else safe to go. They are exposed to the cold, to violence and to aggression from the state. Encampments expose our failure to act on homelessness by making it visible. In turn, many of us are blaming encampment residents — who are bearing the brunt of decades of Canada's housing crisis — for not having anywhere to live.
Those who think the solution is to break up encampments want to push these problems out of sight, where they can ignore the uncomfortable reality of human suffering and of our failure to act. Others think they can simply impose solutions without actually consulting anyone who has experienced homelessness. These topdown approaches do not work.
In developing the new report, I met with encampment residents across the country. I wanted to hear directly from them about their lives, their living situations and what they need. People told me stories of how they were failed, again and again, when they asked for help.
I met a man in Victoria who suffered a workplace accident that ultimately ended with him living in an encampment. He had worked and paid taxes all his life. He lost his wife to cancer and after the accident, the system failed to protect him at work, then protect him from poverty, then protect him from homelessness.
Living in the encampment, he desperately did not want people in the community nearby to fear him, and he desperately did not want to be evicted from his campsite, where he had access to washrooms, food and some community support. He was terrified because he was older. At the end of the conversation, he started to cry because he did not want to die in this camp. This is not where he wanted to end his years.
I heard people explain how they were forced from encampments and told to move along, their items of survival taken away: tents, sleeping bags, warm clothes. I heard heart-wrenching accounts of people losing irreplaceable photos of family and friends — even the ashes of their loved ones.
People said they felt unsafe in emergency shelters, where theft, crowding and violence are common. Sleeping in a shelter meant no privacy or autonomy, and it meant being separated from their friends, families and partners. Every person I spoke with said encampments were the best choice out of a bunch of bad ones.
Canada prides itself on treating people with dignity and respect. This must include people living in encampments. Homelessness is not new, but a human rights approach to it is. That's what I am calling for.
What we need to do is listen to the people in encampments to make sure we're meeting their needs and finding them permanent, adequate housing. To respect their dignity by providing them with basic needs such as water to drink, food to eat, health care. To give people the security of knowing they will not be thrown out of their encampment, where they have found safety and community, at a moment's notice. To involve them in making decisions and finding solutions. This is how we will make a lasting difference to solve homelessness.
Encampments are not a solution. But whether we like it or not, encampments exist. So, what is the solution? Permanent, adequate housing. Every person I spoke with said they would like to move into a permanent home.
Canada has the capacity to solve this national crisis. What we need is an urgent, national response. What we need is co-ordination, new resources and political will. We need everyone at the table: the federal government, provinces, territories and Indigenous governments — and most importantly, people with lived experience of homelessness.
We also need to end this generational moral failure by investing in our housing system and addressing the root causes of homelessness.
We have called on the federal government to convene a national encampments response plan by Aug. 31, 2024. For people living in encampments, every day is a matter of life and death.
So yes, you should be angry about encampments. But you should be angry that in a country like Canada, we have not done everything we can to make sure everyone has a safe, adequate place to call home. The time for action is now.