Background
Across the country communities are grappling with a rise in homelessness and encampments, alongside a worsening toxic drug crisis. In response, the Ontario Big City Mayors launched a new campaign last August, called Solve the Crisis. It called upon the federal and provincial governments to reduce the pressure municipalities were experiencing on homelessness.
In the months since the Solve the Crisis campaign’s launch, there has been increased attention on the elements of enforcement and criminalization, over housing-focused solutions to housing and homelessness.
A resolution passed by the Ontario Big City Mayors requesting that the provincial government update to the mental health and health care consent acts; implement diversion courts; introduce legislation prohibiting open and public use of illicit drugs and public intoxication; and update the Trespass to Property Act. Premier Ford responded to this resolution by pressing the mayors to take it a step further by asking him to use the notwithstanding clause to respond to homelessness.
On October 31, a group of mayors responded with a letter requesting that the Premier consider using the notwithstanding clause with legislation related to mental health, addiction, and homeless encampments. Specifically, they would like to suspend Charter-protected rights to allow police to dismantle encampments and penalize the people living in them with incarceration.
Communities have called for the use of the notwithstanding clause tool because they are desperately seeking responses to a real challenge that is complex and growing. However, if implemented, this clause will give the province the ability to override the basic human rights of people experiencing homelessness without actually addressing the root cause of the problem, which is a lack of housing and support.
A Better Way Forward
Homelessness is a housing problem. Forced treatment, enforcement, and criminalization will not solve homelessness—the solution to encampments is housing. Our communities deserve rapid, sustainable, and housing-focused solutions to permanently address growing encampments.
There are steps the province can take now to rapidly resolve encampments with housing-focused solutions that are not rooted in enforcement:
- Provide communities with enhanced funding now for outreach to ensure communities have the resources they need to meet with people in encampments and respond to their housing needs; and
- Quickly introduce support for housing-first programs and increase quality interim housing options, as we saw during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, to ensure that people experiencing homelessness have access now to readily-available, safe, and adequate housing options.
As mayors have noted in their letter to the Premier, communities are dealing with very complex issues. We need real policy solutions, from all levels of government, that are proportional to the scope of the problem:
- Making significant investments in deeply affordable and supportive housing. This is necessary to ensure our province has the housing stock needed for those experiencing and at-risk of homelessness.
- Expanding access to voluntary and evidence-based treatment across Ontario. Involuntary treatment does not work, and Ontario does not have enough voluntary treatment for those seeking it out. You cannot force someone into treatment that doesn’t exist, and even if it did, they would still be homeless when they leave.
- Increasing income security and housing benefits to ensure Ontarians have the means to afford rent and prevent more people from becoming homeless. As the gap between income and housing costs grows and cost-of-living pressures increase, many households in Ontario are struggling to keep up with rising housing costs, and there is a direct connection to increasing homelessness.
- Match the federal government’s encampment funding. There are dollars on the table that Ontario has the ability take up now to provide municipalities with real tools and resources to help move people experiencing homelessness into housing.
All efforts to resolve encampments must uphold and protect the rights of people guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Those experiencing homelessness, including those in encampments, are people with rights and they do not surrender those rights while living in an encampment and experiencing homelessness.