(Halifax) Canadian municipalities are reporting an increase in sometimes fatal fires in tents and other temporary shelters used by homeless people – a social phenomenon that aid groups say is a tragic consequence of the country's homelessness crisis.
Posted at 6:17 p.m.
Lyndsay Armstrong The Canadian Press
As the homeless population continues to rise — and freezing weather sets in — it's inevitable that there will be more accidental fires, admitted Tim Richter, president and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, in an interview Wednesday.
“If all you can do is find a propane tank or a camp stove, that's what you're going to survive on, because the alternative is freezing to death,” said Richter, whose organization estimates there are between 260,000 and 300,000 homeless people in Canada. “Winter is just beginning and I guarantee there will be fires and amputations [à cause d’engelures] and other deaths,” he warned.
Last Monday, three people were found dead in a burned-out shed outside a Calgary hardware store. A fire official said there was evidence that the victims had used the shed as a shelter.
There have been two deaths related to homeless camp fires in Edmonton this year; Last year there were four. The Saskatoon Fire Department has recorded more than 30 fires in tents or homeless camps this year, up from 12 in 2022 and three in 2021.
In Halifax, firefighters have responded to more than seven fires involving unoccupied people since September, including two recent tent fires; The residents of both fires escaped uninjured. Deputy Fire Chief David Meldrum said the resident of a tent that caught fire said he was running a small propane heater inside and fell asleep. Firefighters, he added, found a burning propane tank in the other tent, as well as a butane stove and a small heater nearby.
No more homelessness
Homelessness has increased across Canada in recent years. A study conducted by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness in 11 Canadian cities found that chronic homelessness increased by 40% between February 2020 and October 2023.
In Montreal, there were 4,690 “visible” homeless people as of October 2022, a 33% increase since April 2018. In the Halifax region, the number of homeless people was 1,082 as of Tuesday; According to the Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia, there were 300 in February 2020.
Marie-Josée Houle, Canada's federal housing advocate, says homeless people are being forced to make heartbreaking decisions to sleep outside. “The reality is that people need warmth, winter is so harsh […] Ultimately the answer is housing,” she said in a recent interview.
Ms. Houle's interim report to the Canadian Human Rights Commission shows that makeshift camps have become more numerous and densely populated since the start of the pandemic in 2020. And these camps have increasingly been the subject of a series of “punitive responses” from local authorities. “Issuing tickets, arrests, forced evictions and destruction of tents and personal property,” Ms. Houle points out in her interim report on the homeless camps investigation published in October after.
The report said these people rely on propane and fire for heating and cooking, and that tents and other makeshift shelters easily catch fire, causing flames to spread quickly throughout the camps and destroy the shelters and their belongings.
“And these are their survival objects […] and those are the things that make people feel more human: photos, religious symbols or even the ashes of their loved ones,” Ms. Houle added in an interview.
“Dismantling is not a solution”
Alexandra Flynn, a law professor at the University of British Columbia who specializes in housing and homelessness, said camp fires are of course most common in winter and in colder cities, but she also stressed that fires pose a risk year-round.
“Some local authorities or fire departments will say that the answer to this question is to dismantle the camps because of the fire risk. But in the work I was involved in, this was not flagged as a solution,” Professor Flynn said.
Research shows it's safer to offer fire safety assistance, fire extinguishers and access to shelters or warming stations than to break up an encampment, she said.
Ms Houle also agrees: “The reality is this […] Forced dismantling of camps will not prevent fires from starting. “In fact, it will only make people more vulnerable and distance them further from the resources they have.” »
Increasing the stock of affordable housing in cities should be a priority, but all levels of government can take steps to improve the safety of homeless people, Houle said.
An example of the steps the government can take is in Saskatoon, she said, where fire departments are assisting the city's encampments rather than dismantling them. “The Saskatoon Fire Department refused to be used as a weapon against the people in the camps,” the defense attorney said.
Yvonne Raymer, deputy chief of the Saskatoon Fire Department, said there are two full-time positions at the camps for fire safety inspections and other support services.
connection agent
“We do what we can to build trust and relationships with these people,” Raymer said. People in uniform don't always trust, especially when they say “that's not safe” or “that's not appropriate.” »
Raymer said the work involves talking to homeless people and connecting them with services such as warming centers, shelter or medical care. His department has recorded 860 “interactions” with camp residents so far this year.
“Saskatoon is a small city with big city problems, so we are very busy,” she said.
And while Richter applauds the Saskatoon Fire Department's approach, he says the only solution to homelessness is to “get people out of the encampments” and into housing that meets their needs.
Governments, he added, must treat homelessness as if it were caused by a natural disaster, including by renting hotels for homeless people or building modular housing for them.
“The fires won’t stop until the camps stop,” he recalled.