Images of unrest between protestors and police in Halifax grabbed attention nationwide as a homeless encampment in the city was dismantled Tuesday.
Watching closely was housing rights advocate Lisa Ryan.
“We’re seeing what happens when poverty is criminalized,” she says.
“We’re watching what happens when communities go for the easy solution and that’s out of sight, out of mind.”
For years Ryan worked with unhoused people in Moncton as the community development coordinator for the city’s Homelessness Steering Committee before moving to Nova Scotia just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
She’s also experienced homelessness firsthand.
READ MORE: Halifax police pepper spray crowd during protests over torn-down shelters
She wasn’t in Halifax Tuesday, but says the issue behind the unrest is not unique to the city, with encampment evictions happening elsewhere in the region as well.
“We don’t want to know that we have a significant issue with housing insecurity and homelessness in Atlantic Canada,” says Ryan.
“That doesn’t help our image.”
She points to an instance in the fall of 2019 where a sizable site in Moncton was cleared, leaving those staying there with nowhere to go as winter approached.
Stepping stones, she says, on the path to the clash seen one province over.
“It’s already happening,” she says.
“While we may not visually see a massive protest trying to advocate for people’s encampments being moved, it would be foolish of us not to understand the destruction and the removal of encampments is happening.
“And there are no solutions given to the folks that are moving.”
Fredericton’s plan
Fredericton Homeless Shelters Executive Director Warren Maddox says the large encampments just don’t work.
“There’s a massive amount of exploitation that takes place, there’s dangerous environments, there’s criminality,” Maddox says.
He says New Brunswick’s capital has started rolling out a pilot program to allow for smaller so-called “tent-cities,” based on an idea brought to him by Fredericton Police Chief Roger Brown.
“Chief Brown and some volunteers that he was working with came up with something that was pretty innovative,” says Maddox.
“So instead of one big tent encampment that’s out of control, they have probably five or six smaller microsites.”
He says each “microsite” in Fredericton has four to six tents, a designated site captain, portable toilets, weekly trash collection and daily police check-ins.
Because of this system, he doesn’t see a protest unfolding there.
Both he and Ryan say the key to keeping the unrest at bay is both political and financial in nature.
More affordable housing, maintained beyond construction.
Something that could become a hot topic on the Federal campaign trail, but Maddox says needs to hold water beyond the election
“Don’t let this just become another campaign promise that goes away in October.”
Comments