Homeless Encampments: Municipal Engagement Guidance
HOMELESS ENCAMPMENTS: Municipal Engagement Guidance developed by National Working Group on Homeless Encampments
This Guidance is intended to support municipalities in engaging homeless encampments in a constructive and peaceful manner. The Guidance is not a road map to solving homelessness. It is an effort to establish national standards, based in human rights, for municipal government engagement with encampments across the country. It is intended to help ensure the best outcomes for those living in encampments and their communities in the short term, while establishing a foundation for longer-term solutions.
The Municipal Guidance was drafted through discussions and with the input of the NWGHE whose members include the Chair and Vice-Chair of the Big City Mayors caucus Mayor Savage (Halifax) and Mayor Clark (Saskatoon), respectively – as well as Indigenous representatives, people with lived expertise, social medicine doctors, front line harm reduction workers, academics, and advocates. Representatives of federal and city governments and human rights institutions also participated as observers. The list of formal participants is at the close of the document. The Municipal Guidance was shared at the Big City Mayors Caucus in May 2023. It was also shared with the Federal Housing Advocate to inform her review of homeless encampments, expected to be concluded in early 2024.