Tent cities Save Lives. They Shouldn’t Have To.

Long before the dual public health emergencies of COVID-19 and the overdose crisis, tent cities have been a safe haven for the homeless. How did it come to this?

A glimpse of the Kennedy-Trudeau Homeless Encampment. Photo credit: Ryan Sudds.

I park my bike and survey the park. Tents — nearly 400 of them, according to a recent count — are everywhere.

Some are immaculate, while others decay, garbage bags and tarps strewn above to deflect the rain. It’s early autumn, so while the grass beneath my feet is dry, the skies will quickly part. When they do, residents, some of whom have been without stable housing for years or decades, want to be prepared. I don’t blame them. When your only protection from the elements is a flimsy piece of plastic, Vancouver’s mild winters can feel a whole lot harsher.

I’m at the Kennedy-Trudeau homeless encampment (Camp K-T for short) for a meeting. I greet residents and volunteers sat near the tennis courts, who wave and share Chinese food, before slowly walking north. I’m cautious about avoiding tents — they are people’s homes, after all — and I stay vigilant as I cross the soccer field, careful not to tread on food waste, uncapped needles, or garbage. The refuse doesn’t bother me, but my stance isn’t universal: Neighbours in nearby Strathcona have watched the occupation grow, and while a few are empathetic, others loathe the perceived invasion. Their ire is why I’m here.

As camp liaison, my role is to mediate communication between K-T and housed residents of Strathcona. They live adjacent the park in eclectic row homes, apartment buildings, and collective dwellings, most of them pristine. Four out of five are renters, one in five is aged sixty-five or older, and one in two is a low-income earner.¹

A historically working-class region, Strathcona is more culturally diverse than most neighbourhoods. It hasn’t been immune to gentrification, though: Like every Vancouver borough, the last twenty years have brought with them an influx of wealth and Whiteness. Under normal circumstances these socioeconomic and racial disparities may be a point of contention. Now, though, a singular cause has united Strathcona residents: K-T has to go.

Arriving at my destination, I sit in a tattered lawn-chair outside a spacious tent. Beside me is a cluttered plastic table, several kits of injectable Naloxone, an opioid agonist used to counter the effects of overdose, and a large flag. The flag features a stoic Indigenous woman, and it symbolizes not just camp demographics but its leadership, as well.

K-T is led by Matriarchs, one of whom I’m meeting, and under their guidance I relay messages to and from the neighbours. My job requires diplomacy, which can be tough while fielding questions that range from the pragmatic to the absurd. I am often asked for how long camp will remain, or how housed individuals can expedite its dissolution. I feel like a broken record, but I re-iterate that until all tiers of government develop a comprehensive plan for eliminating homelessness, tent cities are here to stay.

Why tent cities?

Problems with supported housing

Camp K-T is unique but not anomalous. In the lower mainland alone, recent months have seen homeless encampments emerge and be disbanded in Maple Ridge,² Abbotsford,³ Surrey⁴, and elsewhere. Each of these sites has followed a trajectory so similar that it would be apt to call it textbook: A small encampment grows, housed neighbours complain, and the Province intervenes. In doing so, they promise that residents will be offered adequate housing, yet it becomes immediately apparent after police have destroyed the encampment that many unhoused people still have nowhere to go.

K-T itself is the third iteration of what began years earlier in Oppenheimer Park. One of Canada’s largest and longest-running tent cities, Oppenheimer had ballooned to roughly 300 people — a fraction of the city’s total homeless — when Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction Shane Simpson announced a public safety order to evict campers, citing concerns about the spread of COVID-19.⁵ This announcement came on April 25, 2020, and residents were given two weeks to decide whether to accept space in an empty hotel room or other accommodation or to be arrested. Some entered temporary emergency housing that had been purchased by the government, which B.C. Housing declared a win.

Yet within hours, tents had been erected at Crab Park, and the cycle began anew. This time the BC Supreme Court acted quickly, approving a 15-day injunction filed by the Fraser Port Authority in early June that gave the 180 residents just 72 hours’ notice before the VPD descended. As it did, the dearth of government and non-profit presence was striking. 48 housed supporters of the camp were arrested for civil contempt of court, though.

Now, it is September. The truism, “if nothing changes, nothing changes” comes to mind as Chrissy Brett, my de facto boss, joins me. Chrissy is a long-term organizer, and her dogged commitment to uplifting the voices of unhoused people has been instrumental in the proliferation of tent cities across B.C. She has a knack for getting under people’s skin, and though she is demonized by onlookers (a years-old Change.org petition to ban her from all tent cities because she “supports open drug use criminal trouble” still appears via search engines) and police, her fortitude astounds me.

Chrissy echoes my frustration as we discuss residents’ lack of options. Specifically, the notions that government housing is a) available; and b) appropriate propagate the myth that homelessness is a choice. What the public fails to understand, however, is that many K-T residents have been on the B.C. Housing wait list for months, years, or longer. This speaks to a broader affordability crisis in B.C. that has disproportionately impacted racialized, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, and disabled communities.

The housing market here is impenetrable, and the provincial government, which welcomes investment capital and benefits significantly from the globalisation of property⁶, hasn’t picked up the slack. Instead, it deregulates private institutions, slashes public budgets, and funnels money to “expert” coalitions who nail bureaucratic buzz-wording⁷ but fail to do much else.

If the “Battle for 58” taught us anything, it’s that even written promises to build welfare rate social housing are usually empty platitudes. In Vancouver, this means that people living on income or disability assistance, as well as undocumented people, temporary foreign workers, pensioners, and people generating illicit or semi-licit incomes, are excluded from renting. To buy would be unfathomable. Thus, with each passing year, the housing waitlist grows.

It is important to note that since March, the province has invested millions into first converting closed community centres into self-isolation sites and shelter expansions, and then purchasing hotels to use as supported housing.

Specifically, after buying the Howard Johnson and Buchanan Hotels for $74.4 million in June, it acquired the American Hotel and the empty lot next door as part of its affordable housing plan.⁸ The long-term scheme for these sites is ambiguous, but the BC Housing Action Plan for 2019–22, developed after the Governments of Canada and British Columbia signed a bilateral agreement in 2018 to “protect, renew, expand, and social and community housing,”⁷ suggests the province will prioritize community and supportive housing. The community housing fund will direct $1.9 billion to building and operating 350 rental housing units in partnership with municipalities, non-profit providers, co-ops, and Indigenous organizations, but these collaborations are rarely accessible to the visibly street entrenched.

This is why supported housing matters: $1.2 billion will also be spent on building and operating 2,500 units for those who are unhoused or at risk of being unhoused, with the stated goal of stabilizing personal situations and re-establishing connections to the community. The province also just announced that it will partner with the city of Vancouver to build 450 additional units of supported housing in the next few years.

In theory, this is great. Those of us familiar with the intricacies of “supported” versus social housing are wary, though. Suspending reality for a moment, even if recent moves by the government provided sufficient space for every single homeless person in the province to acquire a room, rendering the housing waitlist moot, we would still see unhoused people.

This is because in B.C., supported housing is unliveable.

“Homes” with this designation are a mix of single room occupancy (SRO) hotel rooms and self-contained units, and they are managed and staffed by non-profit agencies. To apply for B.C. Housing projects, one must complete a “vulnerability assessment” interview to quantify their level of risk in ten areas including “survival skills,” “communication,” “mental health,” and “substance use.”⁹ This instrument ostensibly exists to determine the supports one needs to “remain housed and live a healthy, stable life,” but it is flawed because “health” in this context is defined by the (mostly) White, educated, middle-class people who act as housing gatekeepers. Items such as “survival” and “communication” skills are culturally specific, and impersonal evaluations don’t consider interviewer bias or power imbalances.

Coercing people into disclosing intimate details about their lives in exchange for shelter also establishes a hierarchical relationship between residents and staff members, which makes building trust impossible.

This lack of trust is apparent before even stepping foot inside a supported housing building. Notoriously grim, most have policies that prohibit one from entering until they’ve produced government-issued identification, and it’s not uncommon to be surveilled by cameras at all times. Sometimes pets are banned, and fob systems restrict residents’ freedom of movement between floors. Partners may also be separated when their buildings and rooms are designated by the province, and one must sign in and out with staff.

Beyond this, B.C.’s Ministry of Child and Family Development (MCFD) doesn’t consider these spaces appropriate for minors. This means that Mothers whose children have been apprehended may not be able to regain custody until they live elsewhere, so some opt out entirely. People who have tried — and failed — to live in supported housing can be found in the tents that stretch around and, to a lesser extent through, the soccer field at Strathcona Park. Wanting as they are, at least homeless encampments afford unhoused people autonomy.

Finally, we are in the midst of an overdose epidemic that kills more people in B.C. each month than COVID has since it began.

July was the third consecutive month where deaths from illicit drug consumption in B.C. surpassed 170, representing a 136% increase from 2019.¹⁰ The province has technically been in a “state of emergency” over a poisoned drug supply since 2016, but the pandemic has interrupted international supply chains of fentanyl and prompted traffickers and dealers to replace it with substances that are even less predictable.¹¹

With concurrent COVID-based restrictions on access to overdose prevention sites, users have been abandoned and must fend for themselves. Some supported housing distributes harm reduction supplies and offers safe injection rooms, but many also implemented no-guest policies earlier this year. The conflicting advice of “don’t use alone” and “stay socially distanced” has been confusing for managers, who some say are breaking the law — and their spirits — by not allowing visitors¹²

The statistics are telling: Of the 175 drug-related fatalities in July, 85% occurred indoors.¹¹

Issues with addiction treatment

When I point this out to the neighbours, some suggest that the solution is more addiction treatment. Many have wondered why the province’s recent decision to pour $16 million into recovery services for adults and $36 to services for youth¹³ hasn’t been embraced by drug users, and the answer is that more often than not, treatment doesn’t work. On occasion, residential or outpatient treatment is the catalyst for long-term abstinence. However, anecdotal success stories are rare for reasons that begin at the top and trickle down.

First, treatment centres in B.C. are licensed as residential care facilities under the Community Care and Assisted Living Act (CCALA), which has no regulation dedicated to substance use. This means that the province doesn’t monitor treatment quality and outcomes, and it allows Executive Directors or Managers to eschew evidence-based standards of care such as trauma and opioid agonist therapy (OAT) based on personal preference.

Next, while all other health services in B.C. are delivered by provincial authorities, residential recovery services are operated by non-profit agencies or for-profit companies. This translates to inconsistent expectations about staff qualifications, with many hired after going through a program themselves but with no formal education. To put it bluntly, they don’t know what they’re doing.

A dearth of provincial oversight means that addiction treatment facilities are crapshoots. The costlier ones tend to offer tertiary services such as yoga, acupuncture, neurofeedback, and even on-site swimming pools, while those that are publicly subsidized — the only ones the unhoused will see — may be more like flop houses.¹⁴

Regardless of payment route, the vast majority of treatment centres are abstinence-based: Though archaic, the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a quasi-religious program devised in the 1930’s by two White, straight men, are entrenched in policy and practice.¹⁵ The program’s guiding principle, that addiction is “a disease rooted in selfishness and self-centeredness,”¹⁶ is scientifically disproven, and it can be especially damaging for the denizens of tent cities who are marginalized at the intersections of class, race, culture, and gender and contend with severe post-traumatic stress.

For treatment to be beneficial, it must be culturally safe. Paradoxically, a few campers at K-T have said that while they had no intention of reducing their drug use upon arrival, the lack of pressure to do so, as well as the availability of resources such as a sacred fire, tended to twenty-four hours a day by an Indigenous-trained fire-keeper, have led them to cut down.

More critically, though, abstinence or reducing use may be neither feasible nor desirable. Even if treatment were widely accessible and of excellent quality, sobriety doesn’t guarantee someone housing, employment, or a meaningful life. To expect someone to stop snorting, smoking, or injecting their drug(s) of choice when they know they will be re-exposed to the conditions that produced their addiction the moment they leave treatment is asking a lot; too much, perhaps.

Related, ample research demonstrates that high-intensity illicit drug use is exacerbated by systemic oppression, particularly poverty and drug prohibition itself. In Canada, politicians are acutely aware that anti-drug legislation kills, so calls for “de-stigmatizing” drug use are hollow because you can’t destigmatize something that’s illegal.

The disenfranchised know not to expect much from government, so they keep each other alive: At K-T, volunteer nurses oversee a make-shift medic tent that has a respirator and naloxone, usage is visible and normalized, and an overdose reversal team patrols the camp on foot on and around income and disability assistance cheque issue days. The neighbours don’t like the presence of visible drug use, but there have been far fewer drug-related deaths at tent cities in B.C. than there have been elsewhere. When it comes down to it, survival trumps discomfort.

Ultimately, supported housing, addiction treatment, and mental health care, which operates through the same punitive framework as do substance use recovery services, are functionally the same. They represent what sociologists refer to as “the medicalization of deviance.”¹⁷ As public discourse around housing-deprivation, addiction, and mental illness transitions away from describing these issues as criminal in nature, medical paradigms have been employed to de-politicize systemic inequalities: It is easier to treat homelessness and drug use as individual sicknesses than to contextualize them within imperialism, colonialism, anti-Black racism, and capitalism, because doing so would be an admission of guilt.

Disappearing people into institutions is more convenient. As the proliferation of tent cities across B.C., Canada, and the U.S. highlights, however, it also doesn’t help.

What is to be done?

Part of the reason I’ve been appointed camp liaison is because I have personally been homeless. I have also been addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine. When the neighbours ask why my circumstances changed dramatically, I frustrate them by answering truthfully: I’m White; I was raised in the suburbs; I’m formally educated. My “recovery” trajectory hasn’t been linear, but every time I’ve resumed substances use and have lost my housing, I have been treated very differently than most are at K-T: The police (mostly) give me the benefit of the doubt, medical professionals (usually) have compassion, and my appearance and mannerisms paint me as sympathetic relative stereotypical conceptions of unhoused, violent “junkies.” I re-build my life, but doing so is a privilege that others aren’t afforded.

The solution to tent cities, then, will not be found in forcing every unhoused person to conform to middle-class norms of respectability. Instead, it will require profound structural change, and a willingness from each of us to decide what we can give up. Benevolence is nice, but unless housed people are actively redistributing resources and pressuring the government to follow suit, we are part of the problem.

More concretely, a recent article by Toronto-based physicians Dr. Naheed Dosani and Dr. Trevor Morey offers a three-step “prescription” for ending homelessness in Canada:

Step one: The Federal government must develop a specific timeline for ending homelessness while recognizing that unhoused people are not an homogenous group and tailoring services accordingly.

Step two: The Feds must implement policies that lift people from poverty without penalizing those who are capable of generating income (i.e. by restricting their monthly assistance if they report income that exceeds the paltry sum one is allowed to make on welfare).

Step three: Develop 370,000 new units of affordable housing. Quickly.

Locally, K-T leadership has also published a list of demands that focus on health, housing, and justice:

First, they echo calls across Canada and the U.S. for returning the land to Indigenous peoples. More than any other assertion, this tends to anger settlers. Members of the SRA have pointed out that it’s not feasible for every non-Indigenous person to simply leave the continent, and when they do, I explain that “land back” isn’t just material. It also refers to honouring the spiritual connection that Indigenous peoples have with the unceded territories on which we live, work, and play, and prioritizing Indigenous ways of knowing and being with natural resources. To this end, the Elders at K-T support the construction of a healing lodge and long-house in the parking lot at Crab Park for urban Indigenous peoples.

Next, leadership advocates for the construction of 10,000 units of social housing every year until everyone who wants to be safely housed can be. This also raises eyebrows, particularly because housing must be reasonably spacious and voluntary. In other words, the government must treat unhoused people as adults who are capable of deciding with whom they want to engage and when. This doesn’t mean that many won’t request assistance, or that some might not benefit from more co-ordinated infrastructure at their place of residence. First and foremost, though, “support” has to be consensual.

Third, the state is being asked to stop policing homelessness. This doesn’t mean that the police are unwelcome should serious incidents occur¹⁸, but that municipal resources are better spent on housing than they are on criminalizing poverty. Dispatching outside authorities can be aggravating and frightening, particularly for those who are used to being profiled, and as a leader, Chrissy is respected: Campers abide by informal rules because she asks them to, and because they know that to cause trouble could result in eviction. Outsiders may not see it, but K-T has a code of conduct that works. Police intervention, on the other hands, just incites discord and distrust.

Finally, leadership is demanding a safe supply of illicit and other substances. This is hardly novel, and it aligns with calls from drug user activists, academics¹⁹, front-line workers, and government officials²⁰ to decriminalize (and eventually legalize, according to more radical actors) drug use.

Chrissy and I finish our conversation, and I prepare to leave the park. I have new information for the neighbours, but regardless of what I say, some will still be hostile.

I know this is inevitable.

Tent cities are distressing. They force us to confront our own vulnerabilities because their visible, concentrated suffering destabilizes the neoliberal claim that if we work hard, are fiscally responsible, and are in essence “good,” we will be safe and comfortable. Places like K-T challenge that. There are residents who were paramedics or belong to labour unions and don’t use drugs, but despite doing everything “right,” they are still unhoused. The prospect of following a similar trajectory, which grows increasingly probable as the provincial government moves to lift its COVID-19 eviction ban, is scary. For some, then, coping with unavoidable physical proximity entails psychologically othering.

As I walk back, I see that a drumming circle has started and the kitchen crew is unloading new donations. The library, which supplies books and access to wi-fi, is quiet, but opposite it in the medic tent, two nurses are chatting while one treats a camper’s wound.

For now, this particular tent city is safe. Until all levels of government collaborate to end the cycle of displacement here and throughout the country, it is also the best chance that many residents have.

The soccer field won’t be hosting a match any time soon.

References:

1. Social Policy and Projects. (2019, November). 2019 Strathcona Social Indicators Report. City of Vancouver. https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/social-indicators-profile-strathcona.pdf
2. Bernardo, B. L. B. A. M. (2019, September 17). Expect another tent city in Maple Ridge within 6 months if changes aren’t made: advocate. NEWS 1130. https://www.citynews1130.com/2019/09/16/anita-place-six-months-maple-ridge/
3. Penner, P. (2019, September 19). The “Abbotsford Shuffle”: cold weather a dangerous element for homeless campers. Mission City Record. https://www.missioncityrecord.com/news/the-abbotsford-shuffle-cold-weather-a-dangerous-element-for-homeless-campers/
4. Collins, L. (2020, June 27). Surrey’s latest tent city dismantled. Surrey Now-Leader. https://www.surreynowleader.com/news/surreys-latest-tent-city-dismantled/
5. Winter, J. (2020, August 14). The last days of a tent city. Vice Media. https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/g5ppvq/the-last-days-of-oppenheimer-park-vancouvers-tent-city
6. Geographer Dr. David Ley has been a prolific critic of the globalization of property in Vancouver. In this article, he explains that the government invites foreign capital via investment and economic skills and benefits significantly from its relationship with the trans-Pacific property industry. Through Harry Molotoch’s “growth machine” thesis, he illuminates how state policies such as deregulating private institutions exacerbate price inflation and lead to severe unaffordability for residents. See Ley, D. (2020). A growing ecology, a great wall of capital and a metropolitan housing market. Geography, Urban Studies, and Planning. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098019895226
7. BC Housing. (2019, July). The CMHC-British Columbia Bilateral Agreement Under the 2017 National Housing Strategy
8. Zimmer, E. (2020, June 29). BC government buys another Vancouver hotel to house homeless. Daily Hive. https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/bc-government-buys-hotel-homeless-the-american
9. Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. (2016). Vulnerability Assessment Tool for Determining Eligibility and Allocating Services and Housing for Adults Experiencing Homelessness. Training Manual for Conducting Assessment Interviews. Canadian version adapted from DESC’s manual (June 2015 edition). Toronto: The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness Press.
10. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. (2020, August). Illicit Drug Toxicity Deaths in BC. British Columbia Coroner’s Services. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/illicit-drug.pdf
11. Schmunk, R. (2020, August 25). B.C. marks 3rd straight month with more than 170 overdose deaths. Cbc.ca. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-overdose-numbers-july-2020-1.5698795
12. Denis, J. (2020, July 28). Is it time to let visitors flow through SRO hotels Again? The Tyee. https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/07/28/Let-Visitors-Flow-Through-DTES-SROs/
13. Mental Health and Addictions. (2020, July 10). New beds, support to help more people access addictions and recovery care | BC Gov News [Press release]. https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2020MMHA0034-001246
14. Brend, Y. & Dufresne, M. (2016, September 11). What we learned phoning every drug rehab facility in British Columbia. Cbc.ca.https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/what-we-learned-phoning-every-drug-rehab-facility-in-british-columbia-1.3756425
15. Wood, B. (2020, August 29). BC Addiction Ministry ignored coroner’s recommendations. Medium.https://medium.com/@byronwood/bc-addiction-ministry-ignored-coroners-recommendations-9b1c6144283d
16. Bill, W. (1976). Alcoholics Anonymous: The Story of How Thousands of Men and Women Have Recovered from Alcoholism. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services
17. Conrad, P., & Schneider, J. W. (1992). Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
18. Thibault, A. (2020, August 6). Vancouver police increasing patrols in Strathcona in response to neighbourhood concerns. CTV News.https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vancouver-police-increasing-patrols-in-strathcona-in-response-to-neighbourhood-concerns-1.5053412
19. Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. (2017, November). Joint Statement on Action to Address the Opioid Crisis: A Collective Response (Annual Report 2016–2017). Health Canada. https://ccsa.ca/joint-statement-action-address-opioid-crisis-collective-response-annual-report-2016-2017
20. Bula, F. (2020, March 25). Safe supply of opioids needed ‘right away’ to avoid overwhelming hospitals in COVID-19 pandemic: Vancouver Mayor. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-safe-supply-of-opioids-needed-right-away-to-avoid-overwhelming/