Winnipeg advised to mirror Halifax model to tackling homelessness

The approach taken by Halifax has inspired a delegation from Winnipeg that’s searching for ways to address the homeless crisis in this city.

“We went and came back feeling really hopeful that this could work here,” said Marion Willis, executive director of St. Boniface Street Links. “I’ve never felt so validated in my life.”

Willis, some of her staff and Coun. Cindy Gilroy went on a “fact-finding mission” to explore how Halifax is dealing with its homeless problem.

Willis said she wanted to learn more about so-called sanctioned sites and began looking to other provinces and their models.

The Halifax Regional Municipality hired its first outreach worker in 2021 and has dedicated staff for housing and homelessness, which performs outreach and co-ordinates with its provincial and federal counterparts.

Halifax has three designated areas where encampments can be set up. The city-owned properties are serviced with portable toilets, garbage disposal services and a power supply. Outreach teams visit the sites daily, but they are not managed by social workers or city staff.

The sites are meant as short-term accommodations while people wait for social housing managed by the province.

The city also has a 40-room tiny home village called Ron Cooper Village, which is run by a non-profit and it is geared toward seniors.

The approach has been so successful that in recent years, Halifax officials have been able to close some sanctioned encampment sites as people found permanent housing.

Willis said a designated encampment in Winnipeg would keep people in one area instead of being spread out on the fringes of the city where services are harder to access.

“Sites like this with services can restore some basic human dignity,” Willis said. “I’ve been pretty determined that that’s what I think we need.”

Halifax has many of the same social issues as Winnipeg that drive homelessness, such as addiction and mental-health problems.

Many people can’t afford rent and end up sleeping rough, said Max Chauvin, the director of housing and homelessness for Halifax.

“We faced this large growth in the number of people experiencing homelessness, and you’re faced with an emergency response of ‘where do people go?’ So as an emergency response, we created this idea of designating some places where people could be. That way we’d be able to co-ordinate services in response better,” Chauvin said Wednesday.

In 2024, Halifax had 1,132 homeless people, city data states. In Winnipeg, End Homelessness Winnipeg’s street census in 2024 found there were at least 2,469 unhoused people.

Living in encampments is “bad for everybody” said Chauvin, but the system minimizes the negative impact on residential neighbourhoods and businesses while helping people sleeping on the street.

Chauvin said 65 to 70 per cent of people who sleep on Halifax streets use the sanctioned areas.

Halifax has a list of sites where camps are banned, just as the City of Winnipeg recently passed a bylaw — championed by Gilroy — to prohibit tents near schools, parks, train tracks bus shelters and high-traffic streets. Compliance officers visit areas with outlawed camps and connect people with sanctioned areas or outreach teams for social services.

The designated encampment approach has been widely accepted by Halifax residents, its director said.

“Every call I take pretty much starts with the words, ‘nobody should have to live that way, and let’s find a solution,’” he said.

Willis said the City of Winnipeg could entice people to set up in designated encampment areas by putting them on a priority list for housing.

She stressed the three levels of government would need to work together to create such a system.

“You can’t always have the municipal government trying to offload onto the provincial government, and the provincial government trying to offload onto the municipal government,” she said. “We all have responsibility.”

The City of Winnipeg didn’t send a representative to Halifax and said questions about the trip should be posed to Coun. Gilroy, city spokesperson Kalen Qually said in an email Tuesday.

Gilroy is on medical leave and was unavailable to comment.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca