Just before the Ontario legislature rose for its winter break, Doug Ford introduced Bill 242, the Safer Municipalities Act, which escalates the ongoing criminalization of unhoused people across Ontario. Introduced on December 12 and carried at first reading, Ford claims that the measures found in Bill 242 will help cities “address and dismantle” encampments across Ontario.
The legislation contains two parts: the first part is the Restricting Public Consumption of Illegal Substances Act, which establishes a new system of fines and possible jail time for individuals either consuming or “believed to be consuming” illegal substances in a public place. The second part is an amendment to the existing Trespass to Property Act, which establishes greater scope for police to issue penalties under the act.
There much that we still do not know about Bill 242 and how it will be implemented. What we do know is that taken together, this legislation provides police and municipal law enforcement officers additional tools for pushing unhoused people out of sight and concentrating them into jails rather than housing. Failure to comply with orders issued under these Acts will result in fines of up to $10,000 and up to six months in jail.
What we don’t know is how and to what degree municipalities and police departments will utilize these new powers. This is likely to vary by municipality and will be shaped by the level of struggle in defense of encampment residents. We also do not know if the new funding for shelters that was announced to accompany this bill will be enough of a carrot for all municipalities to acquiesce to the new stick, as we know many councillors across the province signed-on to a letter opposing the government’s enforcement-led approach to encampments.
But what’s clear by now is that this legislation does not aim to reduce homelessness – it seeks only to manage it with an iron first. Ford’s new strategy for “addressing” encampments is not to provide unhoused people with a dignified home or an improved quality of life. Instead, his strategy is to push homelessness out of sight.
The response
Ford’s legislation has been welcomed by his coterie of right-wing mayors and the business lobbyists in the CFIB.
Perhaps most surprising so far has been the warm response by Hamilton mayor (and former Ontario NDP leader) Andrea Horwath, who released a statement uncritically welcoming “the Province’s commitment to dedicating additional funding toward this critical issue”. She added that “the City of Hamilton will work closely with the Hamilton Police Service and other partners to ensure we are taking an effective, compassionate, and coordinated action in addressing this ongoing challenge”. How increased criminalization of the unhoused is compatible with “compassionate action” is left up to the reader to reconcile.
Unlike Horwath and other politicians who are eager to play to both sides, the response from homelessness experts and advocacy organizations has been unanimous in their condemnation. The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) responded that “Ontario cannot enforce its way out of homelessness, and this response will lead to more people dying from overdoses in alleyways, and homelessness will spread further into all corners of communities.”
The Canadian Centre for Housing Rights (CCHR) stated that the funding contained in the legislation is “a drop in the bucket compared to the massive need and is overshadowed by the threat posed to encampment residents”. They argue further that “penalizing encampment residents – some of the most marginalized people in our communities – only serves to place the burden of government inaction on their shoulders”.
Even the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) responded by emphasizing that “Only serious investments and coordinated action on transitional, supportive and community housing, mental health, addictions and social services, and income supports can address the impacts of decades of provincial policy.”
The social context
Ford’s attack on Ontario’s unhoused population arrives in a context where an estimated 81,515 people were known to be homeless in 2024, according to a major study published this month by the AMO. This represents a 25 percent increase in known homelessness since 2022. Nearly half of those individuals are experiencing chronic homelessness (41,512), which is typically understood to refer to individuals who have experienced homelessness for six months or more in the last year.
The cause of this dramatic increase is not a mystery. The high cost of groceries and basic necessities, stagnating wages, social assistance rates that legislate recipients into poverty, and an out-of-control housing market that has been turbocharged for extracting profit at the expense of providing a place that people can call home. The symptoms of the cost of living crisis has impacted all of us, but has thrown a significant number of Ontario workers out of their homes and into our streets and parks.
Encampments have grown at an astronomical rate since 2020. A previous report by AMO suggests there may be approximately 1,400 active homeless encampments across the province, based on estimates from municipalities. This is bound to be a conservative estimate, as the number of encampments fluctuate daily and many more are tucked away from public view.
But why, some often wonder, are unhoused people pitching a tent in the park rather than requesting a bed in an indoor shelter? The Federal Housing Advocate’s 2024 report on encampments documented the many reasons why unhoused individuals are driven to live in encampments rather than attempt to access emergency shelters. Her report noted concerns about “conditions like theft, crowding, violence, and the threat of catching illnesses”. She also documents encampment residents’ concerns about “rules that restrict personal autonomy, freedom of movement, privacy, and access to friends and family.”
Simply put, shelters are not housing, and a shelter bed will not meet the needs of every person experiencing homelessness. Just like any other human being, we need to respect the autonomy and self-determination of unhoused people to make decisions that are in the best interest for themselves and their families.
While the evidence of the inequities that produce encampments are clear and easy to understand, many local politicians are failing to defend the human rights of the unhoused. They throw up their hands and hide behind the notion of “compassion fatigue”, allowing the most reactionary voices to drown out the compassion shown every day by working people. But recent polling by Abacus Data showed that 80 percent of people surveyed in Ontario prefer to see governments take a compassionate approach, while only 20 percent want to see an enforcement-based approach where the encampments are simply removed.
We need to be confident in knowing that the majority of Ontarians continue to back a compassionate, human rights approach to encampments, even if our political leaders are trying to create the conditions for a massive crack-down. The oft-repeated concept of ‘social murder’ coined by Frederich Engels is the only one that comes close to capturing the aggressive social cleansing policies being promoted by right-wing politicians across our province, who are now looking only to curry favour with Doug Ford and to shore up their chances of maintaining the support of wealthy donors ahead of next year’s municipal elections.
The need for real solutions
As activists and experts across the province have been consistently arguing, the only solution for encampment residents is housing. But not the free market housing policies favoured by Pierre Polievre or Doug Ford, which are all about cutting “red tape” in order to allow developers free reign to build housing that will maximize their profits. Without a strategy that is rooted in social need, these supply-side arguments will simply result in more housing being built for the sole purpose of becoming someone’s investment.
We need to unite our movements behind demand for historic levels of investment into social housing, an increase in housing benefits and income supports to renters, and for real rent controls that suppress the power of landlords.
When it comes to public and social housing, we need our governments to dramatically invest in new builds – especially with public housing. But investing in new builds has to go hand in hand with making our current social housing a dignified place to live. Social housing providers across Ontario face huge repair and maintenance backlogs, and this chronic underfunding has allowed social housing to become stigmatized. In 2023, Toronto Community Housing identified a $2.659 billion backlog in maintenance and repairs, while CityHousing Hamilton noted they had a backlog of $5.7 million. Addressing these backlogs will increase tenants’ quality of life and bring more unhoused people into rentals they can afford.
We also need expanded access to housing allowances and rental supplements. While they can never be a long-term solution (since they still facilitate the transfer of public funds into the pockets of private landlords), portable benefits like the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB) provide a greater level of autonomy to tenants than other commonly used models. COHB is deposited directly into the bank accounts of tenants and provides an essential lifeline during this cost of living crisis. Ford’s $5 million top-up to the COHB in this legislation is nowhere near enough.
And as Ricardo Tranjan argued in The Tenant Class, we cannot allow the “people and processes creating poverty” to disappear while we focus on making public investments. We need to keep the causes of eviction and homelessness squarely in our sights, and what that looks like right now is demanding real and meaningful rent controls. Fair Rent Ontario is calling on the Ontario government to:
- Eliminate the November 15m 2018 rent control exemption;
- Remove vacancy decontrol and bring back rent control for new leases on vacant units. Create a rent registry to keep track of rents;
- Eliminate Above Guideline Increases (AGIs).
It is only by eliminating the power and control that landlords have over our communities that we can put a stop to the growth in encampments and ensure that our public investments into housing will begin to meet human needs. We know that Doug Ford has been in the business of empowering the landlord class. It should therefore come as no surprise that this new legislation offers nothing to solve the crisis.
Did you like this article? Help us produce more like it by donating $1, $2, or $5. Donate
