Main Street Project workers helped set up new homeless encampment in Point Douglas, residents group alleges By: Scott Billeck Posted: 6:40 PM CDT Thursday, May. 22, 2025 Last Modified: 9:47 PM CDT Thursday, May. 22, 2025 Updates

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One of Winnipeg’s oldest agencies dedicated to ending homelessness is being accused of helping people set up a riverside campsite in Point Douglas where one had recently been cleaned up.

A letter obtained by the Free Press dated Wednesday and addressed to Main Street Project on Point Douglas Residents Committee letterhead details the incident Tuesday in which one or more people say they witnessed an MSP van dropping off an unspecified number of individuals, along with a tent, tarp, suitcases and other supplies as agency workers helped drag the items to the riverbank to “establish a campsite.”

“It appears that Main Street Project may be enabling and supporting the establishment of encampments along the riverbanks,” the letter reads.

“As you may be aware, such encampments contribute to significant riverbank erosion, destruction of biodiversity, and increase the risk of future flooding — putting local homes and infrastructure in jeopardy.”

On Thursday, the Free Press confirmed the letter — copied to Premier Wab Kinew, Mayor Scott Gillingham, Progressive Conservative housing, addictions and homelessness critic Carrie Hiebert, the United Way, the Winnipeg Foundation and End Homelessness Winnipeg — was sent by the group.

The residents committee declined a Free Press request for comment.

The letter posed several questions to MSP, including how assisting with the setup of a new encampment aligns with the organization’s mission and policies, asking whether any agreements or understandings exist between the agency and the city or province that either allow or prohibit such actions.

MSP, a non-profit community health centre established in 1972, has long advocated for Winnipeg’s most vulnerable residents and includes in its mission statement a commitment to ending homelessness.

“As an organization on the front lines supporting people experiencing homelessness, Main Street Project is optimistic that what has been shared to date will lead to an overall improvement in the work we do and our ability to move people into housing that provides supports to keep people housed long term,” the agency said in a release after Kinew announced Your Way Home — a two-year $20-million strategy to address chronic homelessness in the province — in January.

“We look forward to learning more and are eager to being a part of this life-saving collaborative work.”

The residents’ accusation appears to conflict with that declared support of the plan to move people living in outdoor encampments to appropriate housing with needed supports.

“The optics of this are very much confusing,” the group’s letter reads. “On the one hand, using taxpayers’ dollars to fund one program that helps unsheltered people get a proper roof over their heads, and at the same time, using taxpayers’ dollars in the form of (a non-governmental organization) to place the very same people back in the unsanitary, unsafe, environmentally destructive environs of the riverbanks.”

The committee said the practice contradicts the spirit of the phrase “find their way home,” which appears in the province’s strategy.

“We’re confident you will understand and empathize with the fact that supporting people experiencing homelessness is complex and nuanced, and there are no simple solutions in any given situation.”–Main Street Project

MSP declined a Free Press request for comment Thursday. Spokesperson Cindy Titus provided a copy of MSP’s written response to the committee, which did not address the questions posed in the letter or by the Free Press.

“We’re confident you will understand and empathize with the fact that supporting people experiencing homelessness is complex and nuanced, and there are no simple solutions in any given situation,” MSP’s statement said, inviting the committee to review its most recent strategic plan, along with an educational series it created in 2024.

The series offers a description of what the MSP mobile response team does, including the distribution of food, water, safe camp supplies and protection from the weather.

MSP offered to meet with the committee, in person.

‘May be more than meets the eye’

The executive director of St. Boniface Street Links cautioned against a rush to judgment about the circumstances described in the letter.

“To be fair, there may be reasons that are not understood, how that could happen,” said Marion Willis. “There may be more than meets the eye.”

However, she said she sympathizes with the concerns of residents in Point Douglas tired of seeing encampments repeatedly taken down and set up again.

“It’s got to be very frustrating for the people along Waterfront and other places that have had to co-exist with quite a challenging encampment situation, they’ve had to do that for far too long,” she said.

“There hasn’t been a proactive response until fairly recently to get people off riverbanks and out of encampments and into housing.”

She said her organization has helped move people out of 26 encampments on the St. Boniface side of the river this year alone.

“As quickly as we can get people out of those encampments and either into shelters or other housing, if you’re not able to remove all of the encampment — everything — without our outreach team constantly patrolling, those areas repopulate just about as soon as you take one group out,” she said.

Willis said the ability of social service providers, including her organization and Main Street Project, to get people in homes long-term is hampered by the addictions crisis, among other challenges.

Allegations ‘alarming’

Mayor Scott Gillingham’s spokesman, Colin Fast, confirmed the mayor’s office received the letter.

“We’ll be working with the province and End Homelessness Winnipeg to confirm details and get clarity on what happened,” said Fast in an email late Thursday evening.

He added that the city’s priority, as a partner in the province’s new homelessness strategy, is to get people out of encampments and into housing.

Bernadette Smith, minister of housing, addictions and homelessness, was not made available for an interview Thursday. A spokesperson for her office called Main Street Project “a key partner” in helping dozens of Manitobans transition to housing this year.

“Our joint (municipal-provincial) Your Way Home plan expects that the province, city, and service providers like Main Street Project all work together to move people into safe homes and clean up encampments,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Hiebert called the committee’s allegations “alarming,” and said she was trying to get more information from area residents.

“This goes against everything that the current government has been saying that they’re doing,” she said, adding the province needs to give community-serving agencies clear direction and establish more emergency, same-day housing options.

Earlier this month, the government announced it had, within roughly three months, cleared 17 encampments and housed 33 people who are currently being offered wraparound supports.

Hiebert said that at the current rate, it will take roughly seven years to house the 700 individuals who were living in encampments at the start of the year.

— With files from Erik Pindera and Maggie Macintosh

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca

Scott Billeck
Reporter

Scott Billeck is a general assignment reporter for the Free Press. A Creative Communications graduate from Red River College, Scott has more than a decade’s worth of experience covering hockey, football and global pandemics. He joined the Free Press in 2024.  Read more about Scott.

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