No more tents in Allan Gardens – but will the encampment strategy last?

Andre Bermon –

 For the first time in nearly two years, Allan Gardens is encamp­ment free. All that remains on the east side of the park is green grass, trees and the odd patch of dirt. It’s quite the turnaround for the urban greenspace that in the spring/summer of 2023 hosted more than 90 tents. At the time it was Toronto’s biggest encamp­ment.

(To say Allan Gardens is en­campment free comes with a caveat: tents associated with the two Indigenous teepee struc­tures remain – however, unlike the previous residents, they have permission from the city to be there.)

Much credit goes to Ward 13 Councillor Chris Moise for accomplishing this feat. Since coming to office in November 2022, Moise and his staff made it a priority to clear the park and house as many people along the way as they could.

According to the councillor’s October 18 press release, since early 2023 city’s outreach staff managed to permanently house 98 people living in Allan Gar­dens, and helped a further 433 connect with indoor shelter – a significant undertaking given the lack of space.

But is the city’s slow and grinding process to house peo­ple and clear public parks effec­tive in the long term?

The city’s approach to remov­ing encampments doesn’t come cheap. For example, in the last half 2023, council spent $1.7 million, of which $1.1 million was staff operational costs, in supporting Allan Gardens en­campment residents. This in­cluded social services, corporate security and the fire department. The rest of the money went to maintain the Info and Help Centre, a mobile trailer the city placed in the park to service res­idents.

Within that same six months about 56 people were moved into permanent housing, accord­ing to the city’s encampment dashboard. That means about $30,000 per person was spent to support and transition them into housing.

To the city the financial cost was justifiable because the alter­native, forced removal, became unviable. Two key outcomes dealing with encampment evic­tions in early 2023 are responsi­ble for this change in approach: a City Ombudsman report and a court order in Waterloo.

The Ombudsman’s findings about the 2021 police crackdown on encampment sites was polit­ically charged. Its non-binding recommendations effectively reprimanded council’s decision to violently displace homeless people. It also served as a policy roadmap for a new encampment strategy adopted the following year.

The Waterloo ruling by an On­tario Superior Court judge add­ed a legal precedent. In essence, the verdict stated that munici­palities could not evict home­less people from public spaces unless they had somewhere to go, such as shelter beds. Other­wise, eviction could be deemed to violate Charter Rights, and therefore, leave municipalities vulnerable to litigation.

Toronto’s approval of a “hu­man rights-based” encamp­ment strategy last June reflect­ed intentions to build rapport with encampment residents and avoid violent public con­frontations. An additional $3.4 million was allocated to local housing efforts in Allan Gar­dens and Clarence Square Park in Ward 10. Because of budget constraints, the policy allows the city to choose no more than three encampment sites per year and give staff extra resources to house people living in tents.

Now that Allan Gardens is deemed encampment free, the remaining 2024 funds are said to be earmarked for St. James Park, which has seen an influx of tents in the past few months.

Adopting the new encamp­ment policy is certainly laud­able, but its long-term success depends on having places for homeless people to go. As of May 5, the city was accommo­dating 12,221 people in the shel­ter system, with more than half being refugee claimants. In 2023 the city tracked a daily average of 202 callers per day unable to use shelters, nearly double the 2022 number. This year is likely similar, which means hundreds of people lack a shelter bed each night.

Assuming the encampment budget is renewed in 2025, City Council’s park-hopping strategy will sink millions more dollars to house a few dozen people, while the rest get shuffled back into an overcrowded shelter sys­tem. Many will inevitably head back to parks, and encampment roundups will continue.

And since homelessness numbers nearly double exits to housing, according to the city, the backlog will tremendously strain future budgets. That may leave the encampment strategy under-resourced or defunded entirely.

Before the bridge went to print, Premier Doug Ford dan­gled the possibility of using the constitution’s notwithstand­ing clause to overturn Charter Rights of people living in public spaces. Twelve Ontario mayors – not including Toronto’s Olivia Chow – signed a letter pleading for the override power.

If the province uses the not­withstanding clause and forc­es encampment evictions once again onto the table – how will City Council react? Will it go back to the old ways or cling to an unsustainable encampment strategy to avoid a public back­lash? Meanwhile, will voters put up with encampments for years to come?

Whatever council decides, the homeless will lose.