Manage failure or align responses

Every few weeks, Winnipeg repeats the same ritual.

An encampment is dismantled. People gather what little they own and move somewhere else. Outreach workers start over. Police respond to the next location. Emergency departments see the same people. Neighbours grow more frustrated. Businesses absorb another loss.

Then the cycle begins again.

We’ve mistaken movement for progress.

We’re not managing homelessness. We’re managing failure.

After more than three decades working alongside people experiencing homelessness, addiction and mental illness, I’ve reached one unavoidable conclusion.

The system isn’t failing because people aren’t working hard. It’s failing because the system itself was never designed to deal with the realities we face today.

Today’s homelessness crisis doesn’t fit neatly inside one government department or one agency. It exists where housing, addiction, mental illness, poverty and public safety intersect.

Yet Winnipeg continues to respond as though each exists independently.

Housing providers focus on housing. Health-care providers focus on treatment. Outreach workers focus on survival. Police focus on public safety.

Each is doing important work. But the people they’re trying to help don’t live their lives in separate systems.

Neither should we.

Housing remains essential. Every person deserves a safe place to call home.

Harm reduction is also essential because it saves lives and reduces the immediate risk of death.

But we also need to acknowledge a difficult reality.

Today’s addiction crisis is fundamentally different from the one our recovery system was built to address.

The toxic drug supply, widespread methamphetamine use, untreated mental illness and chronic homelessness require recovery systems that are more accessible, more flexible and more integrated than those we have today.

Recovery cannot remain an afterthought. It has to become an equal pillar of our response, alongside housing, harm reduction and public safety.

Instead, we’ve built a revolving door.

Encampments are dismantled. People relocate. Another encampment appears. Outreach starts over. Police respond again. Hospitals respond again.

Nothing changes because the system never changes.

You cannot co-ordinate care for people who are constantly being displaced. That’s the fundamental flaw in Winnipeg’s current approach.

Clearing encampments without providing a designated place to go doesn’t reduce homelessness. It simply transfers the crisis from one neighbourhood to another. The missing piece is co-ordination.

A co-ordinated system requires designated, managed communities where people can be stabilized, assessed, connected to services and supported on a pathway to permanent housing.

These communities would provide sanitation, security, health care, outreach, identification services, income supports, housing navigation and recovery planning.

Every resident would have an individualized case plan.

Every agency would work toward shared, measurable outcomes instead of responding to the next daily crisis.

For too long, we’ve framed the conversation as a choice between harm reduction and enforcement. It isn’t.

Harm reduction saves lives. Enforcement protects communities and vulnerable people. Recovery helps people rebuild their lives. Housing provides long-term stability.

These are not competing philosophies. They are complementary responsibilities.

Managed communities strengthen every part of the system by making co-ordinated care possible.

Governments fund what they value.

If we’re prepared to spend millions responding to unmanaged homelessness through policing, emergency health care, repeated encampment clearances and crisis intervention, we should be equally prepared to invest in a co-ordinated response that reduces those costs while producing better outcomes for vulnerable people, neighbourhoods and taxpayers alike.

As Winnipeg prepares to elect a new city council, every candidate should be asked one simple question:

If not this, then what? More encampment clearances? More neighbourhood conflict? More overdoses? More promises that housing alone will eventually solve everything?

Encampments are not the outcome anyone wants. But pretending we can dismantle our way out of this crisis has failed.

Cities are ultimately judged by how they respond to their most difficult challenges.

Winnipeg can continue relocating homelessness from one neighbourhood to another while expecting different results. Or it can build a co-ordinated system that balances housing, recovery, harm reduction and public safety — and finally gives vulnerable people a realistic pathway from survival to stability.

That’s the leadership this moment demands.

Marion Willis is founder and executive director of St. Boniface Street Links.