Municipal Encampment Governance Through a Human Rights Lens


Laura Pin, Wilfrid Laurier University

Homeless encampments are any place where people experiencing homelessness live in tents or other temporary structures (Farah and Schwan, 2020). Encampments are not new, however recent increases in the number and size of encampments have created new challenges for Canadian municipalities (Flynn et al., 2022). Encampments do not replace permanent, affordable housing, but can be a necessary interim measure for individuals without other housing options when shelters are unavailable or inaccessible (Donley and Wright, 2012; Ha et al., 2015). Even when shelters are available, individuals may reside in encampments due to greater individual autonomy, community, and security of person and possessions (Herring, 2021; Kaufman, 2022; Young et al., 2017). Canadian municipalities have responded to encampments in a variety of ways, ranging from forced clearance of encampment residents, to tacit acceptance, to sanctioning (Brown et al., 2022; Cohen et al., 2019). At the same time, according to human rights law, practices such as forced removal are violations that frustrate Canada’s expressed commitment to a rights-based approach to housing and particularly harm racialized, Indigenous and gender-diverse people experiencing homelessness (Farah and Schwan, 2020). Moreover, municipal encampment responses can be matters of life and death for unhoused residents, who rely on encampments for food, shelter, and support (Boucher et al, 2022). Yet, little is known about why municipalities adopt different approaches to encampments, and how these responses intersect with other areas of muncipal regulation, like bylaws. A human rights approach to housing means recognizing that all people have the “right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity” including individuals experiencing homelessness (CESCR, 1993, see also: Porter, 2021). In recent years, despite the federal government’s adoption of a human rights approach to housing through the National Housing Strategy Act , human rights organizations have criticized Canada’s record concerning a) the right to housing (CCHR, 2022) and b) encampments specifically (OHRC, 2022, Human Rights Watch, 2022). While housing policy is intergovernmental, encampments are often treated as matters of municipal bylaw violation and enforcement. As such, there has been a proliferation of formal policy protocols at the municipal level intended to advise local actors on how to engage with encampments. These protocols include the process for providing outreach supports and/or enforcing bylaws to remove encampment residents. Drawing on a bylaw scan and protocol analysis of all municipalities over 100,000 residents in Ontario, Canada, this paper assesses assess municipal encampment responses through a human rights lens, developed through domestic and international human rights tools. It finds while all 39 municipalities had neo-vagrancy bylaws – bylaws that criminalize elements of poverty - only 14 had publicly available protocols specifically addressing encampments. While there was substantial variation in the approaches taken by municipalities, ranging from explicit recognition of human rights commitments to forced removal. However, even municipalities with encampment protocols addressing human rights commitments, neo-vagrancy bylaws were still in place, including anti-camping bylaws. Moreover, in the event of a conflict between neo-vagrancy bylaws and encampment protocols, municipal protocols generally specified the neo-vagrancy bylaws took precedence. Another limitation of protocols is the absence of positive action towards securing the right to housing, through the provision of municipal services. This research demonstrates the importance of municipalities taking comprehensive approaches to address encampments through a human rights lens, including analysis of how these protocols intersect with bylaws and service provisioning. This paper also demonstrates a need to for future research to explore the lived impact of contradictions between encampment protocols and neo-vagrancy bylaws by people living in encampments and outreach workers.

This paper will be presented at the following session: