As cities across North America grapple with homelessness, one Canadian city has taken a different approach by regulating tent encampments instead of banning them, as it tries to tackle what one official calls the issue “of the decade”.
Andrew Goodsell has called his small orange tent on a grassy patch in downtown Halifax home for almost a year.
In late October, on a park bench outside his makeshift dwelling, the 38-year-old described life at the homeless encampment where he lives with about a dozen or so others as “depressing”.
“I wake up in an area I don’t want to be,” Mr Goodsell said, as a stream of cars drove by.
“I’d much rather wake up in a spot where I could take a shower and maybe make myself something to eat. But I’ll still get myself out of bed.”
Mr Goodsell has been without a home on-and-off for a decade.
He once got by with couch surfing or working minimum-wage jobs to pay rent, but with Halifax’s skyrocketing housing costs, he can no longer afford a place to live.
His encampment is one of nine sites chosen by the city as a place where people without housing can lawfully camp outside. The sites were approved this summer as a temporary, but some argue necessary, solution while indoor shelters are at-capacity.
The policy has been adopted by at least one other municipality, external in Canada and is being considered by others, external who too are facing a rise in homelessness.
It’s in stark contrast to other North American cities where police officers forcibly remove homeless encampments. These so-called “street sweeps” have been criticised as violent and ineffective in addressing the housing crisis.
But they have become increasingly popular as homelessness has grown since the pandemic. California has cleared more than 12,000 encampments since 2021, while cities like Fresno, California and Grants Pass, Oregon have passed complete bans on camping in public spaces.
Proponents of banning encampments say that the campsites lead to disorder, and that funding should go to getting people off the streets.
Among detractors of Halifax’s approach are some encampment residents themselves, who say they want resources spent on affordable housing instead.
“Canada is one of the richest, most beautiful countries around,” Mr Goodsell said. “We have so much land, so much resource, but we must be one of the greediest countries out there.”
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