What Happened When a Canadian City Stopped Evicting Homeless Encampments

As cities across North America grapple with homelessness, one Canadian city has taken a different approach, regulating tent cities instead of banning them in an attempt to solve what one official called “the problem of the decade.”

Andrew Goodsell has called his little orange tent on a lawn in downtown Halifax home for almost a year.

Sitting on a park bench near his makeshift home in late October, the 38-year-old described life in the homeless encampment where he lives with about a dozen other people as “depressing.”

“I wake up in a place I don’t want to be,” Mr. Goodsell said as traffic drove by.

“I’d rather wake up in a place where I could shower and maybe make myself something to eat. But I’ll still get out of bed.

Mr. Goodsell was homeless on and off for ten years.

He once made do with couchsurfing or minimum wage jobs to pay his rent, but with Halifax’s skyrocketing housing costs, he can no longer afford a home.

His camp is one of nine sites chosen by the city as a place where people without shelter can legally camp outdoors. The sites were approved as temporary this summer, but some say a solution is needed while indoor shelters are full.

The policy has been adopted by at least one other municipality., external in Canada and being considered by others, external who are also facing increased homelessness.

This is in stark contrast to other cities in North America where police are violently dismantling homeless encampments. These so-called “street sweeps” have been criticized as cruel and ineffective in addressing the housing crisis.

But they are becoming increasingly popular as homelessness has risen since the pandemic. Since 2021, California has cleared more than 12,000 encampments, and cities like Fresno, California, and Grants Pass, Oregon, have enacted complete bans on camping in public places.

Proponents of a camp ban say camping leads to disorder and that funding should go toward getting people off the streets.

Opponents of Halifax’s approach include some camp residents who say they want resources spent on affordable housing instead.

“Canada is one of the richest and most beautiful countries in the world,” Mr. Goodsell said. “We have so much land, so many resources, but we must be one of the greediest countries.”