Just as the municipality gets ready to shut off power to encampments in city parks, Halifax regional councillors are expressing concerns more encampments with more people will pop up this spring and summer.
Councillors got a chance Wednesday to debate the details of the community safety budget. Bill Moore, executive director of HRM’s new public safety business unit, gave a presentation on the budget during council’s budget committee meeting. That public safety office was created to put more funding into community safety efforts beyond policing.
Community safety is looking for $3.85 million more in its 2024-25 budget compared to the $9.3 million it had for 2023-24. The increase is to help pay for several new positions, including more crossing guards, housing and homelessness support, several positions in emergency management, and the JustFOOD program.
More than $2.3 million of the budget is going to housing and homelessness responses in HRM. That includes funding toward encampments in the city, as well as services to those encampments like water, washroom facilities, and garbage collection.
On Monday, HRM de-designated five encampment sites. As of Thursday, about 29 people still remain living in the parks. HRM said it would cut power to shelters and tents in Grand Parade and Lower Sackville on Friday.
But several councillors expressed concerns about more tent encampments springing up in city parks as the weather gets warmer, noting the city doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for when that happens.
‘We need to put some more resources into this’
Coun. Sam Austin, whose District 5 includes Green Road Park that has the most residents in tents and shelters, put a briefing note on the floor at Wednesday’s budget committee meeting. Austin asked community safety to calculate costs to provide running water, daily garbage collection, and power at all designated encampments. He also wants the cost for compliance officers to manage the designated and non-designated encampments.
“I think we’re going to be in another summer of trying to manage an impossible issue. Frankly, I wonder what the point of closing some of the encampments that we just did is. Grand Parade I get because it’s a public space, but the rest of them, they’re going to be full of people again next year, unless we just leave fences up,” Austin said.
“I think we need to put some more resources into this, even though we all agree that encampments are not the solution. Getting people into options and housing is. But I think we have to be a little more grim-eyed realist on this rather than hoping it’s all going to work out.”
Austin said the services provided at encampments were “uneven.” He said undesignated encampments were set up in Sullivan’s Pond and Northbrook Park.
Moore said some of the services provided at the encampments “grew organically.”
“One of the things we’re discussing now is do we take a more managed approach to encampments. That would mean providing more services to those encampments,” Moore said.
“If that’s the decision of council that we want to do that, then we can make it happen.”
‘What do bylaw officers do?’
Coun. Tim Outhit agreed with Austin, saying there will likely be hundreds of people sleeping rough in HRM parks this year, and there won’t be enough housing options for them.
Outhit asked about compliance officers and enforcement, comparing the situation to the HRM anti-smoking bylaw. Outhit said there was “no chance in hell” enforcing compliance at encampments.
“We as a council have set a policy that says we want to be compassionate. The courts said you can’t move them if there is nowhere suitable for them to go. What do bylaw officers do?” Outhit said.
“They go there and say, ‘Well, you can’t be here.’ ‘Well, I’m not going because there’s nowhere to go,’ and they leave. So, what’s the benefit?”
‘No single option will work for everybody’
Coun. Tony Mancini asked what the numbers could be for people sleeping rough in the spring and summer.
Max Chauvin, director of housing and homelessness with HRM, said the last count found about 100 people sleeping rough in the community. He said that number has since dropped as people took housing options.
“We expect in the spring there’ll be a hundred or more new folks [who] will be coming out of both shelters and their options they maintained for themselves over the winter, and potentially another 100 to 200 over the summer,” Chauvin said. “They’ll come from a variety of different circumstances.”
Chauvin said one of the challenges HRM faces is that there aren’t enough housing options. For example, he said the city needs a harm-reduction shelter.
“No single option will work for everybody,” Chauvin said. “People need different things.”
Moore said the community safety team is working with the province on more housing options. That could include more Pallet shelters, as well as the tiny home community being built in Lower Sackville where there’s currently an encampment.
“That’s where the plan is right now and that’s all, at this point, in discussion to be funded by the province,” Moore said.
Municipal solicitor John Traves said there are people currently in encampments who are “unmanageable” and will not accept housing options or help, for one reason or another,
“Part of what Max [Chauvin] and the team are working on and all of those involved is looking at ways in which we can achieve the policy goals set out for us by council to disincentivize encampments in favour of longer-term shelters, which we know are in short supply,” Traves said.
“How that can be fast tracked is a source of ongoing conversation.”
Concerns about volunteers running encampments
Coun. Tony Mancini said he was concerned about the management of encampments. In particular, he had concerns about community volunteers who had organized groups to help out residents.
Mancini said he’d like to see trained staff, not compliance officers, at the encampments to help with control of issues, adding there have been “unintended consequences” of having volunteers run the encampments. He said the city needs to be able to manage the volunteers.
“Sackville is a perfect example. It become very messy there. If people want to help — and they do want to help — can they go through an organization like Salvation Army, Red Cross, where it’s controlled,” Mancini said.
“But having volunteers show up all of a sudden and take ownership of it, even though the intention is good for most – not all, for most – there’s a negative impact to that. It causes problems.”
Chauvin said to Mancini, “What you’re asking about is a managed encampment.”
Coun. David Hendsbee said the goal should be to get people in other housing options and close the encampments for good.
“Our public spaces aren’t supposed to be private campground sites,” Hendsbee said. “It’s as simple as that.”
“We have to say enough is enough. We’ve got alternatives available now.”
‘This is what de-tasking the police looks like’
Overall, Coun. Waye Mason called the community safety budget the “transformative piece we need to be doing,” adding it will take time for the spending to pay off.
“We’ll see the benefit of having non-police response and alternative response to all these things,” Mason said.
Mason said council can’t say no to funding for some of the issues, including gender-based violence.
“We know that’s a huge issue and we’re not going to solve it by not investing in it,” Mason said. “We are quite comfortable investing $10 million, $15 million more in police, then I think that $800,000 is also required in this place.”
Coun. Lisa Blackburn said she noticed no one at council used the term “defund the police” during Wednesday’s meeting.
“I haven’t heard that phrase used here once today,” Blackburn said. “But this is what that looks like. This is what de-tasking the police looks like.”
Blackburn wanted to know how many of the recommendations from the Defund the Police report are reflected in the 2024-25 community safety budget.
Moore said the business unit reviewed all the recommendations in the Mass Casualty Commission report, the Defund the Police report, and the Reimagining Public Safety report. He said they looked for ways in which the recommendations aligned.
“We’re trying to deal with as much as we can in a fiscally responsible manner,” Moore said. “We can’t take it all on at one time.”
The community safety budget will go for review and final approval in April.
Perhaps they could be quartered in the homes of overhoused boomers?