Canadian homeless encampments have become increasingly visible in recent years, and those residing within them have faced a fair bit of variation in how local governments react to their presence. Today, let’s look at a remarkable legal case that may change the game regarding how homeless encampments are considered under Canadian law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Fuckers can try. I wasn’t directly involved in this but I grew to know personally David Arthur Johnston over (?) a decade ago who spent years in Victoria viscerally protesting right-to-sleep laws/anti-laws and finally won. Due to his tireless efforts, hunger strikes in jail, and community support he helped pave the way for homless people to pitch and sleep in tents for the night on any public property.
Don’t like seeing poor people on public lands? Okay… be part of the solution.
That was his message. And here we are still working on the questions involved, and solutions. Good. As long as the convo is still active and we haven’t given up.
Worst part is that technically things are a lot better for everyone when you don’t need to worry about a homeless population. The only people who would lose anything wouldn’t even notice if three quarters of their money disappeared and they can’t handle losing even a handful of dollars to things like the appropriate compensation of their workers or paying their fuckin’ taxes.
There’s more than just that. There is hatred of the poor, which exists in every class. A phenomenon we’re all very familiar with but which does not even have a name. It’s always politically advantageous to attack the poor, and it rarely wins elections to attack poverty.
Wait until the cons get power, tear gas and batons.
I don’t like homeless encampments, tent cities, favelas etc. They are unsafe, unclean and foster destructive behavior.
Let’s destroy them by building safe, permanent homes for people.
It’s so strange to me that “free market capitalism” lovers can’t see that encampments are a market response. There is a large supply of unenclosed space (parks, sidewalks, underpasses) and an unmet demand for shelter. They shouldn’t be surprised when market participants convert the former into the latter.
How effective do they think it will be to police every unenclosed space in the region vs building adequate shelter. Building shelter has all sorts of associated benefits too.
Market lovers don’t love markets. They love power. And if you can’t exercise power over someone as worthless as the homeless, who can you?
It’s one place that the Canadian legal system has gotten one-up on the US system (Johnson v. Grants Pass), between this and the City of Victoria case. Unless cases in other provinces rule differently (i.e. Prairies’ Bench courts say its no problem to evict, Cour Supérieure de Québec okays it as long as displaced residents get 3 packs of smokes and a 2-4 of beer each etc.), I could see that any appeal could eventually see the federal supreme court ruling along the same lines.
It shows that we have a robust set of Rights given to us by the Charter, but it is easier for cities to overlook them if they aren’t asserted.
