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“Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; it’s walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too.”
– Aldous Huxley
Cities around the world are waving their hands frantically and asking for help to deal with homelessness, addictions and mental health issues. Is anyone listening?
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THE MACRO
Two weeks ago, Barrie Mayor Alex Nuttal declared a state of emergency in his city, located an hour due north of Toronto. The declaration came just a few weeks after police arrested and charged a homeless man for murdering and dismembering two men who shared a homeless encampment in a city park.
According to media reports, the state of emergency, made under provincial law, allows the city to set up a task force, hire consultants and enforce encampment-free zones more forcefully. “We’ve said to the community, if you want help, if you want support, Barrie wants to be the place that helps and supports you,” Nuttal told Global News. “But if what you’re doing is living in addictions and living in a tent on the side of the street, creating disorder, this ain’t the place for you.”
Barrie is not the only Ontario city to use an emergency declaration as a way of combating and drawing attention to the triple threat of homelessness, addictions and mental health. Smithers, a small town of 4,500 in the Bulkley Valley region of the province’s northwest, also declared a state of emergency. Arguably, the first community to take this approach was Belleville, a city in Ontario just east of Toronto, which declared a state of emergency in February 2024, more than 18 months ago.
At that time, a number of cities — including big ones like Montreal — had talked about the unusual strategy of using a legal provision normally reserved for natural disasters to combat social problems. Only a handful have actually done it. The bigger question now is whether it’s working and whether Winnipeg could possibly use the same approach?
Recent news reports on Belleville indicate the declaration hasn’t changed the narrative on homelessness, addictions and mental health. Mayor Neil Ellis just this week issued a statement calling on the provincial government to do more to help municipalities combat these problems, while acknowledging that in the year and a half since he declared a state of emergency, the problems in his city have gotten worse.
“Addressing the severe addiction, mental health and homelessness crisis that exists in the city is a responsibility of the provincial government,” the statement from Ellis noted. “This issue is a complex social problem that requires a multi-agency response and a cohesive, directed plan is needed from the upper levels of government to properly address this crisis.”
There are two easy observations to be made about the efforts of municipalities to combat social problems by using a mechanism normally reserved for natural disasters.
First, even though these attempts to summon an emergency response from the federal and provincial governments have failed, they’ve not gone unheard; both senior levels of government are pumping billions of dollars into support for homelessness and its obvious collateral problems. However, it’s clear that the ‘more’ governments are doing is not ‘enough.’
Secondly, given that it took half a century of short-sighted social policy – including the failure to provide proper supports for those suffering from mental health issues during the aggressive “de-institutionalization” policies in the latter part of the previous century – this is not a problem that is going to be fixed in a year or two. Or a four-year term of any one government. It’s a long-haul challenge.
Nowhere is that stark reality apparent more than Houston, Texas, which three years ago burst to international prominence with what was believed to be, at the time, an innovative way of combating homelessness. In fact, lawmakers and social scientists from all over the world — including Winnipeg — flocked to the huge U.S. city to see the “Houston Model” in action.
How is this model faring now, four years after local government there started rapidly expanding its supply of permanent low-income housing and providing wrap-around services for people moved into those units from encampments? Unfortunately, not so well.
After several years of declining homelessness, an audit of Houston’s unsheltered population showed an increase. It was modest — 45 more people for a total of 3,325. More worrisome was the fact that among that constituency, the number of people who qualified as “chronically homeless” nearly doubled.
Why the setback? The Houston Model started to struggle a couple of years after it was started, when some of the people who had moved into public housing began to return to the streets of their own volition. There was also a problem with private landlords, who had been conscripted to provide housing to homeless people through a voucher system, evicting large numbers for disorderly behavior.
The final nail in a quickly closing coffin for the once-promising Houston Model is the near-complete abandonment by the Trump administration. Within weeks of taking over this year, the Trump administration cut more than $500 million in funding for shelter beds and rent assistance. The cuts meant more than 100,000 fewer housing options for homeless people.
The consequence of all these setbacks and funding cuts is that Houston has returned to more traditional, and less helpful, strategies. In July, Houston city council approved increased funding to support a 24/7 ban on homeless people in the downtown. The city argues that it is not re-criminalizing homelessness, but there is little doubt that it is moving in that direction.
The lessons here are pretty clear. Combatting these problems is a long-term challenge that requires escalating and sustained support from all levels of government. And if any one piece of this puzzle loses faith, the whole effort will collapse.
Let’s keep the faith — and the support — flowing.
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