6 hours Ago By Special to National Post
EDMONTON — Even after more than 30 years in policing and public safety roles, I could not have predicted having to argue that a tent isn’t suitable shelter for anyone, let alone in an Edmonton winter. Just yesterday, I saw a notice of an upcoming rally to collect tents to help people fortify for winter. I saw this as I was reading the latest reports from our high-risk encampment team.
We’ve visited more than 3,600 sites this year, in response to ongoing high levels of community complaints and to seek to get people to services and support. The juxtaposition between the rally plans and the actual conditions on the ground was striking. All encampments are high risk.
And the idea that we could ever provide safety and support for hundreds of people in scattered encampments is impossible. It is also completely backwards to even consider this pathway in a city where sufficient shelter beds exist and in which available provisional accommodations have expanded in recent months. The shelter and agency partners we work with in Edmonton do good work and have made significant strides in raising standards and addressing perceived service gaps including the need to keep couples together, store personal belongings, and not lose beloved pets.
Still, there are ongoing gaps and growing pressures including unforeseen circumstances such as the growth in the homeless population coming from newcomer communities, a factor that is straining systems across the country. Supporting encampments in this environment is literally an acceptance of failure, especially when you consider the risks and harms that exist, the scale of which has been particularly profound in recent years. As our officers continue to work with partners to manage encampments, we experience ongoing pressure from communities who are clear victims of encampments, too.
Threats to community safety are significant for those who live and work around encampments. Like the people in the tents, communities become havens for disorder, crime and victimization, including open-air drug use and activities of dealers who prey upon people in the throes of addiction and mental health crises. The nexus of disorder spirals into repeated cycles of crime and violence as communities and those in the tents become easy, available targets for opportunistic criminals.
Crime is only one part of the harm. In recent years, we’ve had shigella outbreaks, resulting from lack of proper sanitation in these areas. And we’ve seen winter elements impact so many.
Last year at this time, Edmonton Police Service (EPS) officers responded to multiple encampment fires, something we all fear when open propane-fuelled flames are used as a heating source. Fires happen all too easily with an extreme cost in terms of death, injury, and property damage. Last year, three horrific fire deaths in close proximity to available shelter space jarred us enough to insist that we sound an urgent call for change.
Working with the Province of Alberta, the City of Edmonton and multiple partners, we began to intervene at a more intensive level. Since our new navigation centre opened in January 2024, we’ve seen improvements in connections to service, earlier and more frequent medical interventions, and an overall improvement in community safety. Indeed, crime in our downtown area dropped by 13 per cent while disorder calls to police dropped by nearly a third.
In turn, fewer calls freed up our officers to do more proactive work, doubling time available for this work. Taken together, these figures mean that encampment removals allow us to better get ahead of crime, violence, and victimization before it happens. Most importantly, no one has burned to death in a tent since and sudden deaths within EPS’s downtown division have decreased by 13 per cent (YTD).
There are gaps, we all can see them. But an encampment to navigation centre pathway has been a game changer. The services offered — from support for addictions, financial assistance, or even permanent housing have all seen a strong uptake and have helped our government and co-located agency partners better understand the needs, gaps, and the potential for new solutions.
By early October, the navigation centre had more than 3,800 visitors who were connected to these services. The model is one many cities are watching and looking to emulate. Housing and homeless issues are complex, and the data clearly shows a house alone will not solve the problem.
There is no silver bullet, but moving forward to solve these intractable issues starts with admitting that tolerating tents is nowhere on the solution continuum at all. Those who fight inexplicably to set up and protect the tents discredit the progress and efforts made. In turn, hammering in another tent pole gains nothing for the vulnerable nor for the broader community.
National Post Dale McFee is Chief of Police for the Edmonton Police Service..
