Homeless Tent Cities in Canada
- Thread starter Ron in Regina
- Start date
Whats so terrible? If youre healthy, quit getting high and get a fucking job.
he seems to have forgotten that he came from a wealthy family. he never had to worry about housing, clothing, food, bills. etc. the reason why he has the job that he has is because of his wealthy family.
And selling drugs.he seems to have forgotten that he came from a wealthy family. he never had to worry about housing, clothing, food, bills. etc. the reason why he has the job that he has is because of his wealthy family.
The full cabin kit build was completed in about 9 hours.
Check out BunkieLife.com for more information on our cabin kits! You can also call our team at 1-866-428-6543.#lincolnlogs #logcabin #satisfying #fyp #extras...
m.youtube.com
Cool. Some upgrades for climate control/insulation & ready to rock!The full cabin kit build was completed in about 9 hours.
Check out BunkieLife.com for more information on our cabin kits! You can also call our team at 1-866-428-6543.#lincolnlogs #logcabin #satisfying #fyp #extras...
Thicker wood or double wall and insulation is almost too good. 100mm wood only would do.
Even after more than 30 years in policing and public safety roles, I could not have predicted having to argue that a tent isn’t suitable shelter for anyone, let alone in an Edmonton winter.
Just yesterday, I saw a notice of an upcoming rally to collect tents to help people fortify for winter. I saw this as I was reading the latest reports from our high-risk encampment team. We’ve visited more than 3,600 sites this year, in response to ongoing high levels of community complaints and to seek to get people to services and support. The juxtaposition between the rally plans and the actual conditions on the ground was striking.
All encampments are high risk.
And the idea that we could ever provide safety and support for hundreds of people in scattered encampments is impossible. It is also completely backwards to even consider this pathway in a city where sufficient shelter beds exist and in which available provisional accommodations have expanded in recent months.
The shelter and agency partners we work with in Edmonton do good work and have made significant strides in raising standards and addressing perceived service gaps including the need to keep couples together, store personal belongings, and not lose beloved pets. Still, there are ongoing gaps and growing pressures including unforeseen circumstances such as the growth in the homeless population coming from newcomer communities, a factor that is straining systems across the country.
Supporting encampments in this environment is literally an acceptance of failure, especially when you consider the risks and harms that exist, the scale of which has been particularly profound in recent years.
As our officers continue to work with partners to manage encampments, we experience ongoing pressure from communities who are clear victims of encampments, too. Threats to community safety are significant for those who live and work around encampments.
Like the people in the tents, communities become havens for disorder, crime and victimization, including open-air drug use and activities of dealers who prey upon people in the throes of addiction and mental health crises. The nexus of disorder spirals into repeated cycles of crime and violence as communities and those in the tents become easy, available targets for opportunistic criminals.
Crime is only one part of the harm.
In recent years, we’ve had shigella outbreaks, resulting from lack of proper sanitation in these areas. And we’ve seen winter elements impact so many. Last year at this time, Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officers responded to multiple encampment fires, something we all fear when open propane-fuelled flames are used as a heating source.
Fires happen all too easily with an extreme cost in terms of death, injury, and property damage. Last year, three horrific fire deaths in close proximity to available shelter space jarred us enough to insist that we sound an urgent call for change.
Working with the Province of Alberta, the City of Edmonton and multiple partners, we began to intervene at a more intensive level. Since our new navigation centre opened in January 2024, we’ve seen improvements in connections to service, earlier and more frequent medical interventions, and an overall improvement in community safety.
Indeed, crime in our downtown area dropped by 13 per cent while disorder calls to police dropped by nearly a third. In turn, fewer calls freed up our officers to do more proactive work, doubling time available for this work. Taken together, these figures mean that encampment removals allow us to better get ahead of crime, violence, and victimization before it happens. Most importantly, no one has burned to death in a tent since and sudden deaths within EPS’s downtown division have decreased by 13 per cent (YTD).
There are gaps, we all can see them. But an encampment to navigation centre pathway has been a game changer.
The services offered — from support for addictions, financial assistance, or even permanent housing have all seen a strong uptake and have helped our government and co-located agency partners better understand the needs, gaps, and the potential for new solutions. By early October, the navigation centre had more than 3,800 visitors who were connected to these services. The model is one many cities are watching and looking to emulate.
Housing and homeless issues are complex, and the data clearly shows a house alone will not solve the problem. There is no silver bullet, but moving forward to solve these intractable issues starts with admitting that tolerating tents is nowhere on the solution continuum at all.
Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents discredit the progress and efforts made. In turn, hammering in another tent pole gains nothing for the vulnerable nor for the broader community.
apple.news
Just yesterday, I saw a notice of an upcoming rally to collect tents to help people fortify for winter. I saw this as I was reading the latest reports from our high-risk encampment team. We’ve visited more than 3,600 sites this year, in response to ongoing high levels of community complaints and to seek to get people to services and support. The juxtaposition between the rally plans and the actual conditions on the ground was striking.
All encampments are high risk.
And the idea that we could ever provide safety and support for hundreds of people in scattered encampments is impossible. It is also completely backwards to even consider this pathway in a city where sufficient shelter beds exist and in which available provisional accommodations have expanded in recent months.
The shelter and agency partners we work with in Edmonton do good work and have made significant strides in raising standards and addressing perceived service gaps including the need to keep couples together, store personal belongings, and not lose beloved pets. Still, there are ongoing gaps and growing pressures including unforeseen circumstances such as the growth in the homeless population coming from newcomer communities, a factor that is straining systems across the country.
Supporting encampments in this environment is literally an acceptance of failure, especially when you consider the risks and harms that exist, the scale of which has been particularly profound in recent years.
As our officers continue to work with partners to manage encampments, we experience ongoing pressure from communities who are clear victims of encampments, too. Threats to community safety are significant for those who live and work around encampments.
Like the people in the tents, communities become havens for disorder, crime and victimization, including open-air drug use and activities of dealers who prey upon people in the throes of addiction and mental health crises. The nexus of disorder spirals into repeated cycles of crime and violence as communities and those in the tents become easy, available targets for opportunistic criminals.
Crime is only one part of the harm.
In recent years, we’ve had shigella outbreaks, resulting from lack of proper sanitation in these areas. And we’ve seen winter elements impact so many. Last year at this time, Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officers responded to multiple encampment fires, something we all fear when open propane-fuelled flames are used as a heating source.
Fires happen all too easily with an extreme cost in terms of death, injury, and property damage. Last year, three horrific fire deaths in close proximity to available shelter space jarred us enough to insist that we sound an urgent call for change.
Working with the Province of Alberta, the City of Edmonton and multiple partners, we began to intervene at a more intensive level. Since our new navigation centre opened in January 2024, we’ve seen improvements in connections to service, earlier and more frequent medical interventions, and an overall improvement in community safety.
Indeed, crime in our downtown area dropped by 13 per cent while disorder calls to police dropped by nearly a third. In turn, fewer calls freed up our officers to do more proactive work, doubling time available for this work. Taken together, these figures mean that encampment removals allow us to better get ahead of crime, violence, and victimization before it happens. Most importantly, no one has burned to death in a tent since and sudden deaths within EPS’s downtown division have decreased by 13 per cent (YTD).
There are gaps, we all can see them. But an encampment to navigation centre pathway has been a game changer.
The services offered — from support for addictions, financial assistance, or even permanent housing have all seen a strong uptake and have helped our government and co-located agency partners better understand the needs, gaps, and the potential for new solutions. By early October, the navigation centre had more than 3,800 visitors who were connected to these services. The model is one many cities are watching and looking to emulate.
Housing and homeless issues are complex, and the data clearly shows a house alone will not solve the problem. There is no silver bullet, but moving forward to solve these intractable issues starts with admitting that tolerating tents is nowhere on the solution continuum at all.
Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents discredit the progress and efforts made. In turn, hammering in another tent pole gains nothing for the vulnerable nor for the broader community.
Dale McFee: Fighting for tent cities is an admission of failure — National Post
Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents are not helping inhabitants nor the broader community
There buildings that are available for use as temporary shelters. They may not be the greatest but at least people would be out of their tents. Why not use the old colliseum that has been sitting there for years? It's out of the wind & snow - even if you put up tents inside, at least it's out of the cold. There'd be washroom facilities - likely not enough but at least porta potties could be used - again, this would be VERY temporary as people found places to live. But I guess they'd prefer to spend money on other things to try to help these people rather than something that's at least a bit more sustainable. There might be reasons why it's not a good idea but it's better than staying in a tent, outside when it's 30 below!! Just sayin...Even after more than 30 years in policing and public safety roles, I could not have predicted having to argue that a tent isn’t suitable shelter for anyone, let alone in an Edmonton winter.
Just yesterday, I saw a notice of an upcoming rally to collect tents to help people fortify for winter. I saw this as I was reading the latest reports from our high-risk encampment team. We’ve visited more than 3,600 sites this year, in response to ongoing high levels of community complaints and to seek to get people to services and support. The juxtaposition between the rally plans and the actual conditions on the ground was striking.
All encampments are high risk.
And the idea that we could ever provide safety and support for hundreds of people in scattered encampments is impossible. It is also completely backwards to even consider this pathway in a city where sufficient shelter beds exist and in which available provisional accommodations have expanded in recent months.
The shelter and agency partners we work with in Edmonton do good work and have made significant strides in raising standards and addressing perceived service gaps including the need to keep couples together, store personal belongings, and not lose beloved pets. Still, there are ongoing gaps and growing pressures including unforeseen circumstances such as the growth in the homeless population coming from newcomer communities, a factor that is straining systems across the country.
Supporting encampments in this environment is literally an acceptance of failure, especially when you consider the risks and harms that exist, the scale of which has been particularly profound in recent years.
As our officers continue to work with partners to manage encampments, we experience ongoing pressure from communities who are clear victims of encampments, too. Threats to community safety are significant for those who live and work around encampments.
Like the people in the tents, communities become havens for disorder, crime and victimization, including open-air drug use and activities of dealers who prey upon people in the throes of addiction and mental health crises. The nexus of disorder spirals into repeated cycles of crime and violence as communities and those in the tents become easy, available targets for opportunistic criminals.
Crime is only one part of the harm.
In recent years, we’ve had shigella outbreaks, resulting from lack of proper sanitation in these areas. And we’ve seen winter elements impact so many. Last year at this time, Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officers responded to multiple encampment fires, something we all fear when open propane-fuelled flames are used as a heating source.
Fires happen all too easily with an extreme cost in terms of death, injury, and property damage. Last year, three horrific fire deaths in close proximity to available shelter space jarred us enough to insist that we sound an urgent call for change.
Working with the Province of Alberta, the City of Edmonton and multiple partners, we began to intervene at a more intensive level. Since our new navigation centre opened in January 2024, we’ve seen improvements in connections to service, earlier and more frequent medical interventions, and an overall improvement in community safety.
Indeed, crime in our downtown area dropped by 13 per cent while disorder calls to police dropped by nearly a third. In turn, fewer calls freed up our officers to do more proactive work, doubling time available for this work. Taken together, these figures mean that encampment removals allow us to better get ahead of crime, violence, and victimization before it happens. Most importantly, no one has burned to death in a tent since and sudden deaths within EPS’s downtown division have decreased by 13 per cent (YTD).
There are gaps, we all can see them. But an encampment to navigation centre pathway has been a game changer.
The services offered — from support for addictions, financial assistance, or even permanent housing have all seen a strong uptake and have helped our government and co-located agency partners better understand the needs, gaps, and the potential for new solutions. By early October, the navigation centre had more than 3,800 visitors who were connected to these services. The model is one many cities are watching and looking to emulate.
Housing and homeless issues are complex, and the data clearly shows a house alone will not solve the problem. There is no silver bullet, but moving forward to solve these intractable issues starts with admitting that tolerating tents is nowhere on the solution continuum at all.
Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents discredit the progress and efforts made. In turn, hammering in another tent pole gains nothing for the vulnerable nor for the broader community.
Dale McFee: Fighting for tent cities is an admission of failure — National Post
Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents are not helping inhabitants nor the broader community
The problem is that officials say that by not catering to the tent cities that you are forcing them to so something they don't want.
I would think that if you want support there should be some effort on your part to get it.
I would think that if you want support there should be some effort on your part to get it.
An Ontario Superior Court judge issued a ruling Monday that the City of Hamilton did not infringe upon the Charter rights of 14 homeless people who were evicted from local park encampments between 2021 and 2023. As Canadian jurisprudence on this issue seems tinged with judicial activism, and has often protected violent encampments at the public’s expense, this decision is an unexpected victory for common sense.
The applicants, of whom all except one were drug users, argued that their evictions violated their Section 7 Charter rights (“the right to life, liberty and security of the person”) and consequently sought $445,000 from the city in damages.
That’s just shy of $32,000.00 for each of the 14 about people evicted from camping in “public” parks
In 2002, a B.C. Supreme Court case (“Victoria vs Adams”) interpreted Section 7 as granting homeless people a “right to shelter” under the justification that, without basic protection from the elements, individuals risk being exposed to life-threatening conditions. Since then, Canadian courts have prevented municipalities from evicting homeless camps unless it can be shown that enough local shelter spaces exist to provide alternative accommodations.
More recently, some judges have argued that shelter beds only count if they are “low-barrier” (???) and “accessible.” (???)
Critically, a 2023 Ontario Superior Court ruling barred the City of Waterloo from evicting encampments because the presiding judge, Justice Michael Valente, believed that shelters cannot be truly accessible unless they allow on-site drug use??? Wait, What???
The Waterloo ruling arguably constituted judicial overreach, as Valante used encampment evictions as a bargaining chip to push for contentious policy reforms (i.e. permitting drug use in shelters) without public consent. This eventually led Doug Ford’s government to threaten to use the notwithstanding clause, which immunizes designated laws from Charter challenges, to protect evictions from court interference.
But in the new Hamilton ruling, presiding judge Justice James Ramsay took a very different approach than his colleague. Rather than credulously indulge the arguments made by Canada’s poverty activists, who romanticize encampments as benign and welcoming communities, he described on-the-ground realities with scathing moral clarity.
The judge found that the 2002 Adams case only granted homeless people the Charter right to set up temporary, overnight shelters to protect themselves. As neither daytime camping nor the formation of semi-permanent encampments were adjudicated then, no corresponding right to these things was established. According to Ramsay’s ruling, the City of Hamilton “did not prevent anyone from staying overnight” and only evicted campers during the day, so it was compliant with Charter jurisprudence.
apple.news
Permitting daytime or indefinite encampment “would amount to expropriating property, or at least severely limiting property rights,“ argued Ramsay, who noted that, according to city officials, homeless people in Hamilton have become more “territorial” and “possessive” (= violent?) of “their” camps since the city passed more permissive bylaws in 2023.
He emphasized the “countervailing interest of preserving public parks” and stated that “the public is generally sympathetic to the homeless, but it tires of seeing its public spaces appropriated by lawless, unsanitary encampments.” He further noted that “the most vulnerable includes not only the homeless but also the elderly person and the child who wants to use a sidewalk or a city park without tiptoeing through used needles and human faeces.”
The applicants, of whom all except one were drug users, argued that their evictions violated their Section 7 Charter rights (“the right to life, liberty and security of the person”) and consequently sought $445,000 from the city in damages.
That’s just shy of $32,000.00 for each of the 14 about people evicted from camping in “public” parks
In 2002, a B.C. Supreme Court case (“Victoria vs Adams”) interpreted Section 7 as granting homeless people a “right to shelter” under the justification that, without basic protection from the elements, individuals risk being exposed to life-threatening conditions. Since then, Canadian courts have prevented municipalities from evicting homeless camps unless it can be shown that enough local shelter spaces exist to provide alternative accommodations.
More recently, some judges have argued that shelter beds only count if they are “low-barrier” (???) and “accessible.” (???)
Critically, a 2023 Ontario Superior Court ruling barred the City of Waterloo from evicting encampments because the presiding judge, Justice Michael Valente, believed that shelters cannot be truly accessible unless they allow on-site drug use??? Wait, What???
The Waterloo ruling arguably constituted judicial overreach, as Valante used encampment evictions as a bargaining chip to push for contentious policy reforms (i.e. permitting drug use in shelters) without public consent. This eventually led Doug Ford’s government to threaten to use the notwithstanding clause, which immunizes designated laws from Charter challenges, to protect evictions from court interference.
But in the new Hamilton ruling, presiding judge Justice James Ramsay took a very different approach than his colleague. Rather than credulously indulge the arguments made by Canada’s poverty activists, who romanticize encampments as benign and welcoming communities, he described on-the-ground realities with scathing moral clarity.
The judge found that the 2002 Adams case only granted homeless people the Charter right to set up temporary, overnight shelters to protect themselves. As neither daytime camping nor the formation of semi-permanent encampments were adjudicated then, no corresponding right to these things was established. According to Ramsay’s ruling, the City of Hamilton “did not prevent anyone from staying overnight” and only evicted campers during the day, so it was compliant with Charter jurisprudence.
Adam Zivo: Drug addicts don't have a right to fill parks with needles and faeces — National Post
Common sense judge defends City of Hamilton's right to tear down homeless camp
He emphasized the “countervailing interest of preserving public parks” and stated that “the public is generally sympathetic to the homeless, but it tires of seeing its public spaces appropriated by lawless, unsanitary encampments.” He further noted that “the most vulnerable includes not only the homeless but also the elderly person and the child who wants to use a sidewalk or a city park without tiptoeing through used needles and human faeces.”
It's the line share of the problem and the byproduct of an idiotic policy by a trust fund baby who knows dick about addiction.
50 years ago living in a tent and getting high was freedom from Govt.