Conclusions and Policy Directions:
Advancing Human Rights
in Municipal Encampment Responses
Rethinking Municipal Policy Responses to Encampments: Building a Human Rights Approach in Ontario
Municipalities in Ontario are on the front lines of responding to encampments but face considerable challenges. Social service funding decisions rest largely with provincial and federal governments, leaving municipalities with constrained resources and authority. The shifting legal landscape, shaped by multiple court rulings on encampments in Ontario since 2023, has further complicated local responses.
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Nevertheless, municipalities remain key policy actors in both social service delivery and land regulation. Their decisions have significant tangible effects on the lives of people experiencing homelessness. These decisions should be guided by a human rights framework for both ethical and practical reasons. Ethically, such an approach ensures that respect, dignity, and equity are central to municipal policy and practice. Practically, research shows that punitive measures are ineffective, as they treat homelessness as a criminal rather than a social issue. Through a review of the neo-vagrancy bylaws and encampment protocols in place across Ontario in 2023 and 2024, we can draw several conclusions:
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- Most Ontario municipalities continue to have neo-vagrancy bylaws in place that criminalize survival activities of people experiencing homelessness, and these bylaws do not include specific exemptions for people experiencing homelessness.
- While most Ontario municipalities respond to encampments regularly, relatively few Ontario municipalities have publicly available encampment protocols, limiting transparency and public accountability.
- Among municipalities that have published encampment protocols, the adoption of a human rights–based approach is uneven, both between municipalities and across the five pillars of this framework.
- Many protocols rely on enforcement-based responses which can undermine trust and relationship building with people staying in encampments, making it more difficult to connect individuals with housing and resources.
- Some municipalities are beginning to implement innovative, rights-aligned strategies, such as multi-sectoral outreach teams and new models of service delivery, to better support people living in encampments. However, there is concern that municipalities will backtrack on these approaches due to a lack of public support, support from other levels of government, and/or funding.
- Across most protocols, there is limited attention to meaningful participation of encampment residents in designing and implementing approaches and in recognition of Indigenous Rights, leaving significant gaps in realizing a truly rights-based approach.
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Meaningfully addressing homelessness, and by extension encampments, within a human rights framework requires sustained investments in social service infrastructure that provide real access to housing, health care, and supports weaved together with purposeful engagement and care to reconciliation in mutual partnership with Indigenous peoples and nations. This, in turn, demands coordination and funding from all levels of government—municipal, provincial, and federal and deep engagement with Indigenous rights. Moving forward, embedding human rights principles meaningfully across governance levels offers the most promising path toward equitable, effective, and compassionate responses to homelessness in Ontario. There are, however, key ways in which municipalities can immediately engage in realizing the rights of all individuals facing homelessness without having to wait for their provincial and federal counterparts to offer any supports. The pillars in this framework provide the tools to begin now.
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