Joshua Evans, AHSL Research Lead
As news circulates regarding the announcement that 130 homeless encampments will be cleared by the Edmonton Police Service beginning on December 18, a week before Christmas, it is imperative to take stock of what this decision means, both morally and politically. How has this become such a routine measure in a city like Edmonton, one of the wealthiest places in Canada? As many advocates have pointed out, there is “no reason a rich province like Alberta should have encampments,” especially in light of the fact that the province has the financial means to create the housing that is desperately needed. Moreover, according to international human rights law the forced removal of encampments is a destruction of people’s homes which is a violation of their human rights.
How do we make sense of this contradiction? One way to proceed is to acknowledge the social significance of encampments as a form of urban dwelling and then critically examine the political significance of police-led efforts to erase encampments from the urban landscape.
Today, homeless encampments dot the landscape of most large North American cities on a scale not seen since the Great Depression era. Encampments express multiple logics (Herring 2014). Encampments are the outgrowth of adaptive strategies adopted by highly marginalized and vulnerable members of the community who lack permanent housing. In this regard, it is important to acknowledge that encampments are fashioned in response to a broken housing system and a tattered social safety net, twin calamities that disproportionately impact economically disadvantaged households in Alberta.
Market rents have steadily increased and are unaffordable to low-income households, particularly those receiving income assistance from provincial programs whose rates have remained stagnant for years. The emergency shelter system – the sanctioned place of last resort – is itself characterized by operational issues including overcrowding, outbreaks of communicable disease, and safety issues. As a result, the very programs many presume exist to protect the vulnerable function, counterintuitively, as social deterrents.
It is in the midst of this systemic failure that encampments form as unhoused individuals endeavor to address unmet physical, psychological and social needs. First, encampments can address, albeit inadequately, the immediate need for shelter from elements such as wind, rain and snow while also providing some semblance of privacy. Second, encampments can foster a sense of autonomy and self-reliance and in doing so be a source of dignity in a social environment where respect and personal worth is rarely granted. Finally, encampments can be the grounds for mutual support and processes of community-building in a context of extreme material deprivation (Douglas 2023).
Hence, urban encampments reflect adaptive survival strategies adopted by the unhoused and more: they can embody a form of resistance to the disciplinary logic of our welfare system, particularly the “warehousing” of unhoused individuals in temporary shelters that offer little in the way of dignity (Kaufman 2022). In this regard, encampments call attention to systemic failures. As Olson and Pauly (2021, 988) write:
Visible homelessness, in the form of encampments, is a manifestation of government policy failures that neglect to uphold the human right to housing, and demonstrate eroding investments in affordable housing, income and systemic supports.
They also challenge social and cultural expectations regarding what is an acceptable dwelling, a typical household and, ultimately, normal property relations. In this regard, encampments unsettle the taken-for-granted urban order.
It is for these reasons (and many others) that encampments become a problem for the police. Subject to police powers, encampments and their denizens are criminalized and violently expelled or, at best, characterized as safety risks and “compassionately cleared.” Either way, in the absence of meaningful housing interventions, encampment removal practices contribute to the “invisibilization of homeless people” in the city (Margier 2023). They count as one more intervention in a long line of responses that simply manage a systemic problem while simultaneously insulating a provincial government from serious critique and responsibility, a government which has a duty to protect its citizens against human rights violations. As Olson and Pauly (2021, 989) write:
When public health is co-opted by narratives of public safety, it denies the varied human rights and public health concerns raised by residents of encampments that often focus on deficiencies in the determinants of health, such as housing, food and sanitation.
Addressing these deficiencies in housing, and economic insecurity more broadly, is the ultimate solution to the homelessness crisis in Edmonton. In the meantime, a human rights-based response to encampments does exist and can be implemented in Edmonton. It is incumbent upon local leaders to recognize encampment dwellers as rights holders and for provincial leaders to develop social policies that support the implementation of the right to adequate housing in Alberta.
References
Douglas, G. (2023) “Reclaiming Placemaking for an Alternative Politics of Legitimacy and Community in Homelessness.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 36: 35-56
Herring, C. (2014). “The New Logics of Homeless Seclusion: Homeless Encampments in America’s West Coast Cities.” City & Community 13(4): 285–309
Kaufman, D. (2022) “Expulsion: a type of forced mobility experienced by homeless people in Canada.” Urban Geography 43: 321-343
Margier, A. (2023) “The compassionate invisibilization of homelessness: where
revanchist and supportive city policies meet.” Urban Geography 44(1): 178-197
Olson, N. and Pauly, B. (2021) “Homeless encampments: connecting public health and human rights.”Canadian Journal of Public Health 112: 988-991