With summer fast approaching, the city of Halifax is preparing for an increase in tents around local green spaces as the homelessness crisis persists.
As of April 13, there were 1,239 people on Halifax Regional Municipality’s by-name list. This number does not fully capture how many people are facing homelessness in the region, and the actual number is likely much higher.
According to city staff, the list has been growing by about four per cent each month — and the rate is expected to increase through the summer months.
“We do expect to see that accelerate, and at four per cent a month, we potentially could see that number top 1,800 before the end of the calendar year,” Max Chauvin, Halifax’s director of housing and homelessness, said during a presentation to council Tuesday afternoon.
He identified a lack of housing and high poverty rates as some of the major contributors to the issue. He also said the existing shelters and temporary options do not meet the needs of those sleeping rough.
The four designated encampment sites where people are allowed to tent — the Barrington Street green space, Green Road Park, Lower Flinn Park and the University Avenue green space — are growing in population, especially the University Avenue location.
And tents have been popping up in other areas that haven’t been designated by the city.
Chauvin said encampments aren’t good for anyone: they come with health and safety risks for both residents and the surrounding community.
“We must understand that encampments are bad for everybody in the community,” he said.
He said the creation and support of encampments encourages their existence, which the city is taking action to reduce.
The municipality is now restricting the provision of tents and storage, and is providing no additional power at this time.
“We can’t allow homelessness to be normalized,” Mayor Mike Savage said during the meeting.
“We just can’t allow ourselves to get to a point where we say, ‘Well, there’s a certain number of people that are living in the street, and that level is OK.’ It shouldn’t be OK. There’s no need for it to be OK.”
Sam Austin, the councillor for Dartmouth Centre, said in an interview that the growing encampments are “something we all should be deeply ashamed about.”
“There’s a philosophical discussion to be had about, like, how much resources do you put into something that shouldn’t even be in the first place?” he said.
Austin said it’s a “frustrating issue,” as the province is in charge of addressing housing and homelessness, but the city has the green spaces where people are staying.
“You can’t ignore the problem when it’s your public parks that are overflowing with people looking for help and for shelter,” he said.
“And so it’s a frustrating kind of place to be because you’re dealing with two different orders of government, with two different types of responsibilities and some vastly different resources.”
‘Did we overreach a little?’
While Austin said the province has made some good investments in recent years, the housing solutions just aren’t coming fast enough.
“We’re going into a summer with no space for people, and that means people are going to be in our parks,” he said.
“And unless the municipality designates locations, we don’t have an ability to move people.”
In February, council decided to de-designate five encampment sites — the Geary Park green space, Saunders Park, Victoria Park, Grand Parade and the Correctional Centre Park in Lower Sackville — saying “better options now exist.”
Austin stood by the decision to de-designate Grand Parade, but looking back he wondered if they should have kept the other sites open.
“Did we overreach a little?” he said.
“We went with the best information we had at the time, which was there was space available, and … we thought we’d have space coming.”
But with some emergency housing projects falling behind the anticipated timelines, Austin said that isn’t the case anymore.
“With the benefit of hindsight, should we have maybe kept Victoria Park open? Should we have maybe kept Geary Street open? Maybe. It’s tough to say.”