Encampment Support Network (Parkdale) Statement on the Ombudsman Report on Encampment Clearings

Last week, the Ombudsman released a report investigating the City’s encampment evictions from 2021. It concluded that Toronto “displayed insufficient regard” for the encampment residents affected, and came alongside recommendations to the City for the way it should engage with encampments going forward. Similar recommendations have been brought to the City before, but were ignored. What this report has to offer our movement lies in what it reveals about the factors that made the City change course, and how that can inform our struggles ahead.

The report confirmed that the Office of Emergency Management (OEM), whose primary mandate was to clear encampments, was ordered by the City Manager to evict them at “war-time speed.” It confirmed their use of the reduction of encampment “footprints” as a metric of success. This single-minded focus on invisibilizing homelessness outright sabotaged the work of other groups within the City. Parks ambassadors and Streets to Homes staff describe a breakdown between departments. Streets to Homes, a city-funded program charged with connecting people sleeping outdoors to housing, was asked by the OEM to conduct surveillance on encampments on their behalf:

“176. In a June 2021 email, a Streets to Homes staff member wrote to a senior OEM staff member with concerns about collecting data about people living in encampments. The Streets to Homes staff member wrote that they believed this was contrary to Streets to Homes’ mandate. They explained:

“Streets to Homes are often asked to blur their mandate … [and] need to be removed from all encampment clearing activity as it hurts our relationship building with clients … The data collection required of us [suggests] that we are surveillance as opposed to a supportive figure and does not establish a positive relationship-building experience.”

Streets To Homes workers had to go out of their way to avoid being affiliated with OEM actions, going as far as taking off their uniforms:

“177. In an August 2021 email, another Streets to Homes staff member wrote about the challenges they faced in establishing trust with people living in encampments after the City cleared the encampment at Trinity Bellwoods Park. This staff member commented that people living in encampments are much less open to interacting with Streets to Homes staff “to the extent that some [Streets to Homes] staff are avoiding wearing their uniforms … [which is] making it difficult to engage with clients.” The staff person went on to suggest that Streets to Homes staff should not wear any clothing with the Streets to Homes logo and that staff should somehow “get the word out” that Streets to Homes is not involved in clearing encampments.”

ESN had previously voiced concerns around the ways the City collects information gleaned by their housing agencies’ outreach teams. In direct deputations to City Council, we argued that having teams tasked with observing encampment life and distributing harm reduction sit on the same steering committee as the Toronto Police and OEM was a breach of privacy. When the latter would execute violent midnight drug raids and evict encampment residents deemed non-compliant with their housing workers, this amounted to a form of entrapment. Council responded by accusing advocates of “sewing mistrust” amongst encampment residents toward City staff. The extent to which the City’s own agencies understood the ethical implications of what they were being asked to do was made clear in this report.

While we acknowledge the benefit of having these actions put on record, there are limits to the efficacy of these sorts of investigations and reports. For instance, many of the Ombudsman’s recommendations are around making sure encampment residents are given clearer and more timely trespass notices on a wider "variety of communication channels and methods.” In other words, these recommendations intend to reform the process of encampment evictions, rather than reevaluate the purpose of them altogether. The displacement of unhoused people is an inherently violent process, and additional “timeliness” or “transparency” won’t change that fundamental truth.

Past that, it has been 20 months since the eviction at Lamport Stadium, 8 months since the Ombudsman’s initial interim report laid out many of these same recommendations, and 2 months since Ontario’s superior court ruled it unconstitutional to evict people from encampments without available shelter space. Throughout this time, the City has continued to forcefully evict encampment residents, regularly destroying tents and trashing belongings when their owners step out for the day. City departments continue to work at odds with one another - a Streets to Homes worker might come to meet an encampment resident one day, and return to see that the OEM has evicted them the next.

The Ombudsman’s report comes with recommendations the City has agreed to implement by June, 2023, but it’s unclear what process exists to make sure this deadline is held to aside the Ombudsman’s office promising some quarterly “follow-ups.” Accountability gets shunted off across the different corners of an institution, without anything meaningfully changing from the inside.

The report cites the Dufferin Grove Pilot Project as a success story, a plan that involved clearing the encampment in part by connecting people to housing directly from the park, without the blunt force of the summer’s militarized evictions. But its implementation wasn’t so simple. In our daily outreach at Dufferin Grove, we witnessed people who didn’t comply with Streets to Homes have their tents and belongings trashed while they were away. Others were coerced into unsuitable shelter spots, and swarmed by corporate security guards when they tried to return and set up again. In at least one instance, a minor was offered $100 in cash to leave the park for a shelter within the following two hours. By the City’s numbers, 25 people were moved into permanent housing, while 88 went to shelter hotels. Absent are the countless others who were pushed out with nothing.

Those who secured housing didn’t get it because the City applied a “gold standard” approach to their “complex needs”. Many of them stood their ground alongside supporters at the violent eviction of Lamport Stadium encampment just weeks before, and continued to collectively demand housing at Dufferin Grove, in spite of the City’s inadequate offers, misleading information, and coercive tactics.

The Dufferin Grove Pilot Project demonstrates that solutions do exist for encampment residents, but that what is actually lacking is political will - from both the City’s institutions and any number of reports supposedly “taking them to task.” Missing from the report is that Dufferin Grove only came after an immense amount of collective resistance and negative media attention brought on from their violent encampment evictions. The report talks about the need for the City to “repair relationships” with its communities, as though there’s any point in appealing to the benevolence of a closed fist. If we want the City to loosen its grip, we have to pry it open ourselves.