Episode 15: The Politics of Encampments

This episode of Homelessness In Hiding: Our Youth Between the Cracks is the second of a four-part series about Encampment Communities. Michelle Bilek, the National Field Organizer for the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, explains how encampment communities intersect with the discussion of human rights, what it means to exercise our human rights while experiencing homelessness, and how the Region of Peel and its citizens can better approach encampment communities to keep them safe and legitimate.

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Encampment communities have been around for decades, but the COVID-19 pandemic has complicated and proliferated their existence in Peel, Canada, and worldwide. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Region of Peel supported the increase in encampment communities, even promising that established communities would not be disturbed. Ontario, as well, was supporting folks by providing municipalities like Peel with emergency funding to provide folks experiencing homelessness with rooms in hotels and motels if they wanted them.

Now, however, in 2022, much of that funding–much of that understanding, that compassion–has run out. Let's talk about that.