Following encampment closures, Halifax council debates future support for homeless people

In the wake of ongoing efforts to clear out three of Halifax's largest encampments, city officials are debating how to best support homeless people in the coming year. 

On Wednesday, Bill Moore, the executive director of community safety for the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM), presented his department's 2024-25 budget to council. 

The budget includes $112,000 in funding for the city to hire one additional housing and homelessness coordinator, but many questions remain about how the city plans to combat homelessness. 

Although the Victoria Park, Grand Parade and Lower Sackville Ballfield are in the final stages of being cleared out, the city said Wednesday that it expects the number of homeless people living on the streets to increase exponentially this spring and summer as the weather gets warmer. 

"We expect in the spring, there'll be 100 or more new folks coming … and potentially another 100 to 200 over the summer, and they'll come from a variety of different circumstances," said Max Chauvin, HRM's director of housing and homelessness. 

Council questions how city will meet demand

It's unclear how the city will respond to this increase in people on the streets, but Moore said the city will soon issue a request for proposals for a "variety of options" to house up to 200 people, in partnership with the province.

Other solutions may involve moving people to emergency shelters made by Pallet — 19 at Beacon House Shelter in Lower Sackville and 81 which have yet to be installed — or the planned tiny home community in Lower Sackville. 

More options may also come available as people move around, he said. 

But Dartmouth Centre Coun. Sam Austin was among those on council, including Patty Cuttell and Tim Outhit, who questioned how the city will rise to meet this demand. 

"I think the parks and the municipality are going to be awash in people again this summer, because I don't think there's going to be enough space," said Austin.

"We need to be thinking about that now, otherwise we're just repeating the insanity of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Moore said that it's too soon to say if the city will have enough resources to provide housing for everyone in need this summer. 

"I'd like to be able to say that I had the crystal ball to say what that is," he said.

"But our budget right now for homelessness is in the $2 million range. I'm looking and a lot of that, quite frankly, depends on our other levels of government and what they're preparing to fund."

Following encampment closures earlier this week, the Green Road encampment in Austin's district has become the largest in the city. 

On Wednesday, Austin asked staff to come back with a briefing note on how much it will cost to provide electricity, running water and daily garbage collection to the remaining encampments. 

That will be debated next month as part of the city's 2024-25 budget discussions.

Austin questioned if the city now planned to provide electricity to other designated encampments, including on Green Road, after shutting off the power elsewhere. 

Moore noted earlier to council that there is $400,000 in the budget from last year that could potentially be used for this purpose. 

The final budget will be approved in April.