Dealing with encampments is a complex issue with many moving parts
By Lethbridge Herald on July 3, 2025.
Members of the cityÕs encampment response team patrol a large encampment near the Food Bank late last month.Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
For most of us, camping is a leisure activity to reconnect with nature in the summer. But for many of Lethbridge’s unhoused population, it’s their only option to have a place they can call their own.
The City of Lethbridge created an encampment strategy back in 2023, which is designed to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Many experts, including police officers, the encampment response team and outreach supports, say that these encampments can cause risk to the residents and others due to drug use, biohazards and the ever=present risk of fire.
The city’s encampment strategy has a three-tier strategy, with Tier 1 being the lowest risk and Tier 3 being the highest.
In late May, the City was made aware of a large encampment in the Oldman River valley. After giving 24 hours notice, workers began to clean up the debris scattered around the encampment, which ended up being more than 1,000 kg.
Some of these items included a stove, propane tanks and sharp objects, which were removed due to their dangerous nature.
Often there is a stigma that the encampment participants are uneducated, lazy and/or drug addicts. The truth is far more complex, and while these people have fallen on hard times, some of them actually have a post-secondary education.
One lady the Herald was able to speak to was in the Early Childhood Education program at Lethbridge Polytechnic, when the cost of living along with her addiction caught up to her, ending with her on the street.
She says many don’t like using the Lethbridge Shelter and Resource Centre due to the health risks such as staph infections, which can be easily spread, especially through cuts.
“That’s why I choose to stay in the encampments,” she says. “At least I can sanitize my own stuff.”
She adds that she often faces discrimination due to her skin colour, even before she was unhoused.
“I like being out here because I don’t always have to go by society’s rules and sometimes it sucks, because I go into a restaurant here and I get treated unfairly just ‘cause I’m brown.”
Another encampment member shared how difficult it is to get back on your feet once you become homeless.
She says often times people seeking housing are wanting to get sober and more often than not are discriminated against.
“I’m trying to get a place but can’t because it’s so hard,” she says. “Landlords think that everybody’s a drunk, (when) typically they want to stop doing drugs.”
She adds that its extremely difficult to get clean on the streets due to the social pressure of being surrounded by drugs.
There are many resources for these people, such as Aboriginal Housing Society, Fresh Start Recovery and others that offer outreach at the cleanup of these encampments. But those supports very often have a waiting list and other strings attached, which can be difficult for those in the encampments to accept.
Sgt. Ryan Darroch of the downtown policing unit says while some encampment members are genuinely on hard times, there are others who are abusing those in the encampments for their own gain.
“There are some who refuse to enter the shelter, they refuse to engage with outreach and there are those who are taking advantage of our unhoused population while being unhoused themselves.”
He adds that this includes selling drugs, human trafficking and taking advantage of the at-risk population, particularly women.
LPS only responds to Tier-3 encampments which involve several tents and dangerous items. Darroch says their role is to ensure the encampments are cleaned up in a timely manner as well as seizing any illegal items.
“I can’t stress this enough: enforcement is the back end of it, and a very small part of it,” says Darroch.
He also says the participants are also given ample warnings – at least 10 days – before being fined with petty trespassing. These fines cost $600 and are added to a provincial tab which doesn’t have to be paid until offenders get a driver’s license. If that were the case, Darroch says, it would be easy to remove the fines from the file.
Many organizations throughout the city aide the unhoused, many collaborating with each other.
Alvin Mills, founder of Kii Mii Pii Pii Tsin, an agency that provides recovery camps as well as keeping tabs on unhoused residents, particularly those rom the Blood Reserve, says collaboration is key to successfully helping the unhoused.
He says organizations such as Indigenous Recovery Coaching, the Watch, Streets Alive Mission and the Lethbridge Soup Kitchen all provide essential services that protect everyone.
“I’ve never once felt like they were on a high horse and how important that is, especially for these people, even if it’s just getting them a meal, that they are treated like a human being,” says Mills.
While organizations do their best to keep everyone in the city safe, Mills encourages everyone to take five minutes to get to know the unhoused, because everyone is a human being with a story.
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Some good points made by a few people!
First of all congratulations to the lady who is now at Lethbridge Polytechnic . . . happy to hear you have made it out of that culture and are getting an education in an important field. The fact you are already in school after leaving that behind, means there has been a year or two since you were in the shelter and much has changed with the the Blood Tribe Health Authority now running it. It doesn’t have the issues the last shelter had and the Blood Tribe should be applauded! There are also more housing opportunities, with more coming!
Many arrive in our city to conduct criminal activities in the warm seasons and leave when winter comes, and they refuse to stay in a shelter, because they cannot freely conduct their criminal acts.
The encampment strategy failed because the people who were moved and the area then was cleaned, move back in hours later, because there are no deterrents and no one stops them. If there were, they would move to another city, where it is easier for them to conduct their criminal acts. They would accept following the rules in the shelter and accept the housing offered to them as well.
This is very much a law enforcement issue! Even the city administrator who is in charge passed the buck to LPS when pressed on the issues, washing his hands.
Many have lived in encampments in other cities such as Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, even Vancouver, and have become seasoned veterans on living a life of crime on the streets, and have learned how to play the system, including law enforcement.
Both LPS and City administrators have dropped the ball on this, and by doing so, allowed it! Why? Because their mentality, spoken many times in the media before it got worse . . .” it is happening in other cities so we just have to accept it here ” . . . wrong . . . we had it controlled until that mentality spread to others and now here we are . . . you allowed it and now the taxpayer is paying millions of their local tax dollars to enable it! Probably over $14 million dollars every year now goes to dealing with this when you add up police/fire/EMS/the Watch/the Outreach Team, D.O.T., Clean Sweep, all the contractors, and funding of non-profits, etc., and the taxpayer is on the hook because of your bad decisions! We all have to pay now!
I can’t even walk through Galt Gardens while talking on my phone without be intimidated by addicts/gang members who think I am recording them and try to stop me! Canada Day celebrations saw a massive reduction since last year, and last year it had already seen only about 20% of the people who usually go there to celebrate. I took my camera there and took pictures to prove there were more vendors, show and shine participants and addicts there then the public and that didn’t include the members of LPS who showed up to arrest a women!
You are killing downtown with you actions and if you believe that it will just stay downtown and downtown is the sacrifiicial lamb, you are wrong.
We warned you of this at least 4 years ago, and it has been spreading all over the city and increasing as more people flock here because Lethbridge is an easy mark, while other cities have woken up and are digging out, increasing law enforcement and shutting down encampments, Lethbridge welcomes them with open arms with their poor policies!
Just like the SCS, they are not listening to the citizens! Sadly people are moving towards other actions to protect their property and themselves.
After all of the extra funding for LPS and all the new recruits trained, we still have to wait 90 minutes to 2 hours for a member to respond to a call.
Downtown has the top 2 hotspots for crime in the city and much of that occures overnight between 10pm and 6am, but guess what . .. the Watch shuts down around 10pm and a few hours later the DTU is done for the day! Other areas take the calls, with members who are not familiar with downtown often responding and often there are only 8-10 members on duty for the whole city, with domestic violence calls often taking up 3-4 of them and those calls happen more often than people think.
So, after all of the money and training, why are we worse off than 2 years ago and have to wait so long for a member, and by that time the perps are gone and never found or charged???
You tax dollars at being blown! They move in to clean up encampments with a large team and with other resources, just to have them move back and it repeats itself over and over and over and over . . . burning your money!
I am fed up and many businesses are fed up! They will not call police anymore unless they are desparate and some are moving towards getting results and compensation other than filing reports to police or attending meetings to voice concerns.
All talk and no action!