Moving homeless from ‘image routes’ is just optics

Opinion

To be charitable, you might describe it as “out of sight, out of mind.”

Uncharitably, describing it as an attempt to put lipstick on a pig seems more apt.

Winnipeg City Coun. Jeff Browaty dressed it up as a safety issue, and it is, but it certainly feels like the safety part is only half — or even less than half — of the story.

Browaty wants ban encampments on Winnipeg’s “image routes.”

And the “image” part of “image routes” is perhaps a giveaway.

“Along our major thoroughfares, our image routes, it’s not just about the visibility of the encampments. There’s an esthetic (issue) but, also, it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous for the people who are living at those encampments. The ones … around the Disraeli (Freeway) are so close to a major thoroughfare (and it) would be dangerous if (people) were to fall into traffic,” Browaty said.

The move would add routes — including Disraeli Freeway, Pembina Highway, Portage Avenue, McPhillips Street, Main Street, St. Mary’s Road, St. Anne’s Road, Kenaston Boulevard and Regent Avenue — to a motion that is being put forward to halt encampments in community gardens, playgrounds, areas with spray pads and pools, community centres and other spaces designed for children and families.

It’s something that Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham seems willing to get behind: “When you’ve got people … camping close to roads, especially major thoroughfares, to me, it’s an issue of safety. I think that can be and should be looked at,” he said.

It’s easy to understand why city councillors might want to make sure that encampments don’t mar the esthetics of the city, because that’s obviously something that might reflect badly on the City of Winnipeg and, for that matter, on its councillors.

But leaning into the safety side of the argument sounds like more than a little bit of a stretch: after all, while it would be dangerous for encampment residents, especially those under the influence of drugs and alcohol, to “fall into traffic,” it would be every bit as dangerous for others to fall into a river — and there are many, many riverside encampments.

Those squatting in abandoned or fire-damaged buildings are equally at risk — as are those buying and using drugs from questionable and dangerous sources.

Overall, this latest move looks more like addressing the optics of the homeless, rather than actually trying to solve the issue. And more than that — if it were successful, it would simply move a transient population to somewhere else in the city, and make it someone else’s problem.

It seems reminiscent of moves taken before large events like the Paris Olympics in 2024, when thousands of homeless people were moved from encampments near Olympic sites. The French government called it a security issue with no connection to the Olympics at all — activists described the move as social cleansing. The move of people out of Paris, interestingly, lasted only as long as the Games.

It’s almost become an Olympic tradition: before the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the 202 Tokyo Olympics, there were also large-scale roundups of residents suffering from homelessness, poverty and drug issues. Roundups have also happened prior to large-scale economic forums, political conventions, and even prior to the 2022 Super Bowl.

Safety is often cited as a reason for packaging up the homeless and shifting them safely out of sight. But, if the goal is really safety, then a ban has to have a plan. It has to include not only a place for the homeless to go, but a place that is also better organized and measurably safer for its inhabitants — and longer-term than simply through the tourist season, accompanied by a fond hope that no one returns to old haunts.

Otherwise? Lipstick.