Residents at five homeless encampments in Halifax are making preparations as the deadline looms for them to vacate.
Earlier this month, the municipality said it will close five of its 11 designated encampment sites, saying “better options now exist,” including a 70-bed shelter that recently opened at the Halifax Forum.
The affected encampment sites include Grand Parade and Victoria Park, both central and highly visible spaces in the city core. Residents have until Monday to leave.
Lucas Goltz, program co-ordinator for Halifax’s navigator outreach program, was at Grand Parade Wednesday to offer support as residents packed up and planned for the future.
“There’s a lot of changes. We’ve seen some of our tents come down, some people are moving out right now,” he said.
He said several clients have already left to move in with family, get treatment or live in other accommodations.
The city’s plan to clear out the homeless encampments was controversial, with some encampment residents and advocates pushing back against the announcement.
Several unhoused people who spoke with the media indicated that they would rather live in a tent encampment than take their chances at a shelter, but Goltz said many of his clients have since warmed to the idea.
“Those same clients, when asked, ‘Hey, we can get you into housing before the 26th,’ and their answer was unanimously, ‘Yes, yes please. Please find me a warm place because I’m cold,’” he said.
Goltz acknowledged that concerns about staying in shelters are “legitimate,” and outreach workers are looking to find solutions.
“They’re hard places to be in, especially if you’re more vulnerable: you’re female, you’re elderly, if you’re not used to the streets, you’re not used to shelter culture, which can be very rough,” he said.
“There’s a real reason why people don’t want to be in them. So we’re just working really hard … trying to find people space in hotels or other affordable housing options.”
Goltz is “optimistic” that these encampment removals will go more smoothly than what happened in August 2021, when police were directed by the city to clear public grounds of tents and temporary wooden shelters built by advocacy groups for the homeless community.
Hundreds of people poured into downtown Halifax to protest the shelter removals, resulting in police deploying pepper spray into crowds of people and more than two dozen arrests.
When Monday comes, Goltz said he and other outreach workers will be at the encampment sites to help mediate the encampment evictions.
“I really want to see my clients treated well and treated with respect and dignity,” he said. “And so I’ll be here to ensure that to the best of my ability.”
Patrick Sullivan, the president and CEO of the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, said downtown businesses have been concerned for “quite a while” about the homelessness crisis unfolding in the area.
He said with the evictions of the encampments, he hopes the displaced residents are able to find a better place to stay where they can get the care and support they need.
“There needs to be better shelter spots, there needs to be better accommodation, there needs to be housing to help those affected,” he said, “rather than a location that harms both them, living in an outdoor environment in the winter time, and downtown businesses.
“We are happy, I suppose, that they will have that care, and that they will no longer be downtown, and be a concern for both themselves and the other folks in the business community.”
‘The tents are these people’s homes’
But one front-line worker is concerned that encampment residents aren’t actually getting the help they need.
Patrick Maubert, program and outreach co-ordinator of the Brunswick Street Mission, said his organization is already seeing the impacts from the displacement of homeless people.
He said more people are using their services during the day to access laundry, lunches and warm spaces.
“There’s a lot of frustration, there’s a lot of confusion, there’s a real sense that people don’t care about where these folks are going,” Maubert said. “There’s a lot of apathy and sadness, because in some ways, these folks are now being criminalized for merely surviving.”
He said shelters are not always a good solution because many of them don’t allow couples to stay together. There are also usually curfews and restrictions around pet ownership and substance use.
“They want to keep their autonomy, they want to keep the ability to make their own choices, have their own privacy,” he said.
Maubert said it was “disappointing” that the city made the decision to clear out the encampments without first engaging with the residents and community partners.
“I think we could have really helped this transition be a lot more person-centred had we all been around the same table,” he said.
The timing is also difficult to ignore. Halifax is set to host the Juno Awards next month, and tourist season is now only a few short months away.
Maubert believes part of the decision to close down the encampments was due to concerns over image.
“It is unfortunate that the aesthetic of the city is a reason for shipping folks out and to have them lose their homes,” Maubert said.
“Because, at the end of the day, the tents are these people’s homes. It’s their whole lives, their whole world.”
The municipality did not respond to a request for comment by Wednesday afternoon.
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