Agenda, June 4
Encampments
Most of Council’s June 4 meeting focussed on the latest report from staff on homeless encampments and what HRM should do about the situation. Things aren’t going well out there. With Provincial projects delayed and not enough indoor space available for everyone, HRM is back in a place where the number of folks living outside is increasing. There is a particular lack of options for couples, folks dealing with addictions, and youth. Even as new space comes online, the number of folks living outside mightn’t decrease much as there are enough people on the by-name-list to fill any available space. All of HRM’s designated sites are way over their assigned capacity, which includes Green Road in District 5. We’re back into a situation where summer is looking like many of our parks will have someone living in them.
Encampments aren’t a solution to homelessness. They’re awful for the people who have to live in them and they’re awful for neighbours. As they increase in size, the issues around them tend to grow exponentially. Those issues can be reduced when encampments are actively managed, but HRM doesn’t have the staff to do that. We have some good policies, but haven’t committed the resources to follow through. The crux of the debate on Tuesday was what more HRM will do to address the grim reality that encampments aren’t going away anytime soon.
Support Staff
The main recommendation from staff was for a 24/7 Civilian Led Response Team. The idea behind the response team is to divert police calls and provide subject experts to work with encampment residents. The team would include a mental health specialist, a social worker, a bylaw officer, and peer support worker. It’s an approach that other cities have taken and it has been shown to work. Staff identified the creation of several civilian response teams as the most impactful thing that HRM could do, but it won’t be cheap. The cost for four teams to provide 24/7 support would be an estimated $3,200,000 per year.
Many of my colleagues balked at the idea of spending that kind of money, feeling that it’s something the Province should fund. They’re not wrong given how much a response team verges into social services that are the responsibility of the Province. Unfortunately, the Province has, so far, been pretty consistent in not wanting to provide supportive services at encampment sites. They’ll fund services in supportive housing, but servicing encampments isn’t something they’ve not been enthusiastic to take on.
Sometimes you have to face the world as it is rather than as it should be. I suspect this is one of those times. It’s difficult to see the Province agreeing to full fund response teams, which means that HRM will likely be left to decide whether to proceed or not with municipal funding. I don’t think HRM has a whole lot of choice. These are our public spaces, it’s our neighbourhoods that are being impacted, we already incur costs for police and fire calls to encampments, and there is just a lot of unnecessary misery out there. It seems silly to stand on principle and spend money on emergency response, but refuse to spend anything on making things better and preventing those emergency calls in the first place. Council ended up deferring a decision on funding response teams so that we can formally write the Province requesting that they fund the program. I’m not optimistic that we’ll get what we’re seeking from them, but it’s worth a try.
Council deferred a decision on response teams, but we did vote to provide $700,000 in funding to manage two encampment sites (likely University Avenue and Green Road). This is something that I pushed for because we can’t simply have 40 people (and growing) living in a field with little to no support. The plan for a managed encampment is to have staff on site during the day. HRM would also provide a washroom and shower trailer, common space, and space to prepare and store food. I would have preferred 24/7 support, but sometimes, you have to go for what you think the room will vote for rather than your preferred outcome. Having some management is better than none.
Staff did suggest that after hours could potentially be covered by the civilian response team so if the response team program launches that could help fill the nighttime gap.
No Encampment Policy
Another key Council decision was voting down staff’s recommended no encampment policy. The no encampment policy would take effect in 2025 and sounds good in theory, but it’s important to realize that no encampments doesn’t mean no one sleeping rough outside. It means that in the morning, folks sleeping rough have to pack up their belongings and go somewhere else for the day. Staff would be needed to ensure that people took down their tents and that sites were cleaned up.
I couldn’t vote for a no encampment policy because, to be blunt, enforcing it would be really hard to do and the results would be, frankly, cruel. Imagine having to tear down your tent in the pouring rain, gather up your soaked belongings, trudge across town to a library or the coming day centre, before heading back to your preferred tent site in the evening. That isn’t reasonable given that we’re nowhere near having enough space for everyone and it’s hard to see that reality suddenly changing dramatically in 2025. We’re closer to an encampments everywhere policy than we’re to a no encampments policy. We get to no encampments by providing housing, not by turning desperate folks with no option into nomads.
Council defeated the staff recommendation and instead voted for a managed encampments approach. Staff will return with a prioritized list of potential sites that can be opened and closed as circumstances require. Council approved the first additional site at Bancroft and Marketplace in Burnside where a few people are already sheltering.
Day Centre Coming
One bit of a good news in all of the terrible options before Council was that after almost two years of searching, there is finally a location for a Day Centre. The idea behind a Day Centre is to provide a space with services and resources that the homeless can access during the day when shelter spaces are typically closed. The Day Centre will be located in a building that has been donated to Shelter Nova Scotia. This is a big deal as HRM’s experience has been that almost no landlords will lease property if it’s going to be used for services for the homeless. For the Day Centre, that issue has been solved with this donation to Shelter Nova Scotia. Council approved a grant of $750,000 (matched by the Province) to renovate the new space and if all goes according to plan, the Day Center should open next year.
Other:
- Approved entering into an agreement with Halifax Water for capital cost contributions for the Port Wallace development, which will include a new multi-use trail connection from Shubie Park out along Waverley Road to the Port Wallace development
- Extended the deadline for a proposal for the Beechville Community Development Association
- Entered into a number of less than market value leases including with the Boys and Girls Club, the Early Childhood Interventionists Association, the Sackville Seniors Advisory Council, and the Sackville Rivers Association
- Considered a supplemental report on ball diamonds and directed staff to continue to implement the Playing Field Strategy
- Increased funding for rural transit providers such as MusGo Rider to account for increasing costs and to add an increase to account for inflation
- Received a staff report on various aspects of police/public safety
- Authorized the CAO to negotiate an MOU to allow HRM to borrow from the Canada Infrastructure Bank
- Requested a staff report on providing ongoing operating support to the Lake District Recreation Association
- Registered 2552 Gottingen Street and 5561 Cogswell Street as heritage properties
- Endorsed Councillors Cuttell and Smith as representatives at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Thank you for your very informative report. I understand where you are coming from in proposing actions to manage the encampments. However, the priority of all organizations concerned, federal, provincial, municipal and non-governmental should be to house people. It is not clear to me that everybody is rowing in the same direction. Is there a clear plan across organizations involved with a common hierarchy of priorities? If not, shouldn’t there be one? I am sure you are aware that cities like Houston have made substantial progress in housing their homeless. The first thing they did was to get everybody on the same song sheet. Of course, zoning regulations have always been looser in Houston so they can build cheaper faster. We could try loosening zoning restrictions here but the actions of NIMBY groups like the Coalition for a Better Housing Plan who opposed the HAF zoning changes do not help. I read their stuff and they clearly want to avoid changing anything that could affect their peaceful and privileged lives. Finally, when you get people into housing, efforts of social workers and volunteers should focus on keeping them housed. I understand that there is a short term problem but the need to manage what is going on in encampments should not detract from job 1: getting more housing fast (and densification is a great way to move forward), moving homeless people into housing, and then keeping people housed. It should go a lot faster if organizations pool their resources on the same priorities rather than divide their efforts.
Mr Austin:
1. Why a $3,200,000 budget for 16 homeless support workers? That’s $200,000 per worker. Where’s the extra $$ going? Seems like a ridiculous number.
2. Lots of infantilizing “folks”, even talk of a Day (Care?) Centre! No need to look after yourself in the nanny state right? Council needs to wake up to the fact that many of these people are fine with the camping lifestyle. Have you been to Victoria, Prince George, Nanaimo lately? I have, and they all have had to take a firmer approach to management. Victoria requires packing up during the day, which dissuades entrenchment and allows others to use parks for what they are intended.
3. The situation at the Doubletree hotel is indicative of the folly of well intentioned enabling. Cops and EMT are there all the time, legitimate unhoused persons can’t reside there d/t the substance use and unsafe conditions, addicts are obstructing traffic at every corner of the bridge approach, and there’s a shortage of hotel rooms in HRM thanks to government overreach banning AirBnB’s.