I received a question today by email and I want to share my response with everyone.
Q: What is your position on illegal encampments throughout HRM? Should they be removed as quickly as possible as the residents of those encampments are breaking the law.
A: I understand everyone’s frustration with the tent encampments in Halifax. I don’t like seeing them in our city any more than anyone else. I support the managed encampment strategy while we work to move people into pallet shelters, tiny homes and other affordable housing options. Simply removing encampments and criminalizing the people who are tenting there isn’t going to solve the problem, it’s only going to move them to a new, dispersed location or put them in jail, which then overburdens our police force with things they are not equipped to handle. If you’re speaking of the random tents popping up in non-designated locations, I support moving them to designated locations where they can receive more support and wrap-around services to get back on their feet.
We are not going to solve the homelessness problem until we have solved the affordable housing and healthcare problems. So the best the city can do at this time is to make changes to zoning and building requirements and support non-profits who want to build truly affordable housing so we can get as many people off the streets as possible, and provide them with designated areas where they will have access to bathrooms, showers, food, transit and social workers and be safe from being criminalized for being houseless.
(EDIT: That last paragraph…I should have said “In the meantime provide them with”…but I’d already sent this off to the resident.)
More on my thoughts that I didn’t include in my response to the resident:
I am fortunate to own a house (with a mortgage of course) and have a comfortable roof over my head. I cannot envision choosing to live in a tent over going to a shelter, or the Forum, or a friends house if I needed to. But I’m also not in that position. What would I actually do to survive if needed? It’s really very hard to say from the comfort of my warm, quiet, single-detached dwelling.
I recently discovered that someone with whom I do business semi-regularly was houseless for over a year living in a tent for at least part of that time. I had NO IDEA this was happening to them. Any time I called on them for business it was taken care of as if there were no issues.
We hear a lot about all of the “bad people” doing “bad things” in the tent encampments in Halifax and I’m not naive about this. I do, however, think we’re not hearing about all of the people who are NOT engaging in all of the “bad stuff” living there then getting out and back on their feet. Good news doesn’t make for good NEWS.
Homeless people are people. They are our neighbours, friends, colleagues and contractors. We don’t know their entire story and how they got to where they are. Don’t throw the entire barrel out because of a few bad apples.
