Encampment Support Network (Parkdale) Statement on the Waterloo Ruling
In a recent precedent-setting ruling, the Ontario Superior Court blocked the Region of Waterloo from evicting roughly 50 people from an encampment on an unused publicly-owned parking lot. The court found that since “the region does not have adequate, accessible shelter spaces for its homeless population of some 1,100 individuals,” evicting residents would violate their right to life, liberty and security under section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Waterloo decision affirms what unhoused people have been saying for years: not only are encampment evictions unjust and illegal, they’re life-threatening.
This decision doesn’t just consider the number of shelter beds available, but recognizes the shelter spaces must also be suitable. Beyond factors like gender and single versus double occupancy, Justice Michael Valente concluded that inconsistent harm reduction practices, violent incidents, and the fact that drug users are three times more likely to be service-restricted, meant that there weren’t enough truly accessible spaces for all the encampment’s residents.
If Waterloo doesn’t have enough accessible shelter beds, Toronto doesn’t have enough beds of any kind.
By its own data, Toronto has over 1,000 fewer spaces than needed to shelter its roughly 10,000 unhoused residents. Moreover, Toronto’s shelter system has become significantly more violent and deadly through the pandemic. This winter, the City failed to provide sufficient warming centre capacity to prevent people having to sleep outside in -29 degree weather. Instead of acknowledging this immense shortcoming, the City of Toronto justifies encampment evictions by peddling lies that residents are "refusing help," and that their safety concerns are misled.
Justice Valente’s verdict emphasized that whether or not someone accepts a shelter offer was irrelevant to the decision. Instead, it considered whether evicting someone will worsen their already dire circumstances. It recognized that people are forced to live in encampments because it’s their best available option.
When the City of Toronto demolished the Richmond and Simcoe encampment a month ago, residents who had been guaranteed shelter spots discovered those offers were fictional after their tents and belongings had already been destroyed. This was no oversight; the City is happy to count a “referral” as simply being given a shelter address and wishing you luck. Some of those residents had been evicted from the Novotel shelter hotel, one of many the City intends to close by the end of this year. They were left with no other option but to set up camp again—this time in more isolated spots, away from community supports.
Although the Waterloo decision provides a legal barrier to the City’s reckless and violent practice of driving people and their survival gear out of public space, it doesn’t go far enough.
The decision notably omits the need for permanent housing. The Region of Waterloo could appeal to terminate the declaration in the future if they can convince the courts that encampment residents’ rights are being met. This puts people’s right to self-determination in the hands of a legal system that routinely criminalizes them. A kinder, gentler mode of displacing people into overnight emergency shelters harms them all the same. Shelter reforms aren’t an acceptable substitute for genuine autonomy for disabled, elderly, mentally-ill, racialized, migrant and working-class people across the city. We must not let the state determine the scope of our struggle, or the horizons of what’s possible.
We know that wins like this only happen when people stand up to force concessions out of the state and the courts. Legal rights have always been doled out arbitrarily by systems that care more about capital investment than human life. Residents of encampments, shelters and social housing didn't need a court to confirm the realities they are all-too familiar with. Jurisdictions across Ontario shouldn’t need to be sued to stop enacting violence on residents, and we should never have to lobby government bodies to give us permission to survive.
Just as residents and neighbours came together through the pandemic to survive, we must continue and expand that collective fight this winter. Dignity, safety and agency aren't table scraps we beg for at the foot of a court system.
In solidarity,
Encampment Support Network (Parkdale)