Housing advocate requires an finish to tent encampment clearances

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Canada’s federal housing advocate has known as for an finish to the pressured eviction of homeless folks from the tent encampments which have mushroomed in cities and cities throughout the nation.

In a report launched Tuesday, Marie-Joseé Houle mentioned such evictions imperil the lives and security of homeless folks and symbolize a violation of their Constitution rights.

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“Evictions of encampments trigger hurt – and it’s not an answer,” Houle mentioned in an interview.

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The nation has witnessed encampment clearance operations through the previous yr in cities equivalent to Edmonton, Vancouver, Prince George, Calgary, Regina, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal, the place tents have gone up in public parks, freeway underpasses and metropolis sidewalks. Municipalities have justified these evictions by arguing the encampments are each unlawful and unsafe.

However Houle mentioned encampments ought to solely be closed if satisfactory, various housing is made obtainable. In any other case, she mentioned, municipalities must be working with the tent communities in order that human lives and dignity could be preserved.

She rejected the concept that offering municipal companies – water, sanitation, electrical energy – to tent encampments will entrench them in public locations.

“They exist already,” Houle argued. “That is what folks have chosen out of a really horrible menu of horrible decisions. This isn’t an journey; this isn’t an answer. This what they’ve chosen as a result of all the pieces else supplied them is worse.”

Houle made her feedback as her remaining report on the nation’s tent cities was launched. The report calls on the federal authorities to determine a nationwide response plan to what Houle calls “the human rights disaster dealing with folks residing in homeless encampments.”

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“This nationwide disaster requires a nationwide response,” she mentioned. “That is an pressing scenario: persons are dying.”

The federal housing advocate mentioned a nationwide plan ought to search to make sure that all tent dwellers have entry to wash water, sanitation, meals, well being care, heating, cooling, hurt discount and different helps. It must also, she mentioned, be sure that drop-in centres or shelters are accessible 24 hours a day to offer folks with a spot to relaxation, heat up and entry companies.

Houle needs the nationwide response plan in place by the top of August to save lots of lives earlier than the onset of one other Canadian winter.

The federal housing advocate launched a assessment of Canada’s homeless encampments final February and issued an interim report in October following consultations with tent dwellers, municipal politicians, homeless advocates, Indigenous leaders and others.

Right now’s remaining report has been handed to federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser for an official response, which have to be made inside 120 days, based on the Nationwide Housing Technique Act.

Houle mentioned the federal authorities has a accountability to make sure Canada lives as much as its worldwide human rights obligations, together with these owed to Indigenous peoples who make up a considerable portion of the nation’s homeless group, notably in Western provinces. In Edmonton, the report famous, it’s estimated that 60 per cent of the homeless inhabitants is Indigenous.

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The federal authorities additionally has an obligation, Houle argued, to assist municipalities take care of what she known as a “seen manifestation” of the nation’s damaged housing system.

Nobody has counted the quantity of people that now dwell in tent encampments, however the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness has estimated that a minimum of 35,000 persons are unhoused at any given time on this nation. One survey of Canadian municipalities estimated that 20-25 per cent of unhoused folks dwell in tent encampments.

“Encampments symbolize an effort by people who find themselves unhoused to say their human rights and meet their most simple wants,” Houle mentioned.

In 2019, the federal authorities, by means of its Nationwide Housing Technique Act, acknowledged satisfactory housing as a human proper and dedicated itself to the “progressive realization” of that proper. The legislation created a federal housing advocate to defend Canadians’ proper to housing.

Andrew Duffy is a Nationwide Newspaper Award-winning reporter and long-form function author primarily based in Ottawa. To assist his work, together with unique content material for subscribers solely, enroll right here: ottawacitizen.com/subscribe

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