Encampment stats improving but the problem is far from solved
By Lethbridge Herald on June 21, 2025.
Al Beeber
Lethbridge Herald
Negative perceptions of encampments by members of the public has dropped substantially from 2022, according to a report submitted to the Safety and Social Standing Policy Committee of Lethbridge city council on Thursday.
But those perceptions still exist as the SPC heard from a resident and business operator following a multi-pronged presentation by several members of the encampment response team on the city’s encampment response strategy.
The SPC consists of councillors Mark Campbell, Rajko Dodic, John Middleton-Hope and Ryan Parker. After a long discussion, the SPC voted unanimously to recommend that council approve a recommended adjustment in encampment strategy updates from bi-monthly to quarterly.
A report submitted to the SPC by Community Social Development general manager Andrew Malcolm showed that the negative sentiment towards encampments dropped to 20.1 per cent in 2024 from 70.4 per cent in 2022 while positive sentiment rose to 45.3 per cent last year from 2.8 per cent in 2022, “reflecting growing community confidence in the City’s balanced and compassionate approach,” says the report.
The 2024 Point in Time count showed homelessness has increased 15 per cent since 2022 which is a drop in the average annual growth rate which was 19.5 per cent from 2018 to 2022. Between 2022-24 the increase was down to 7.1 per cent annually.
A presentation showed that on the night of Oct. 8, 2024, at least 522 people were experiencing homelessness here. Of those 92 were in an emergency shelter, 274 were unsheltered, 65 were in transitional housing and 82 were in institutional settings.
Downtown resident Barry Ewing told council about what he has witnessed for years and stated bluntly the strategy isn’t a success but rather a failure. He said the streets are where people conduct their illegal business and because the shelter has room for more people, he believes there is no excuse for anyone to be on the streets. He also submitted a lengthy document which can be found on the meeting’s agenda at https://agendas.lethbridge.ca/AgendaOnline/Meetings/ViewMeeting?id=4472&doctype=1
Middleton-Hope said he doesn’t believe the situation is a housing issue but rather a criminal issue, stating the shelter at this time of year more often than not has only 50 per cent capacity.
A representative of Lealta Building Supplies told the SPC he has seen a drastic increase in encampments in the last couple of years and a decrease in customer traffic. He stated that after they’re moved, homeless people often hide around a corner and return at 7 p.m.
“It’s a revolving door,” he said.
Robin James of Lethbridge Housing Association said the organization has done its best to expand the shelter and make sure space exists for people in a safe environment. She stated more local political will is needed to address homelessness, noting the issue is about transitioning people through a housing continuum.
James said the emergency response team has done a great job of making sure encampments aren’t entrenched by the shelter. The team is at the shelter once or twice a week, cleaning up as much as 1,000 kg of garbage weekly, which is twice as much as data shows was being picked up in 2023, James said.
“We did our best to expand that shelter and get that shelter prepared so that there was no question that there was room for people in a safe environment” with heat, air conditioning, bathrooms, running water and an outdoor faucet, James said.
Steps are being taken to open a 90-unit motel with 30 units available, with the encampment team bringing forward names for possible residency.
“But if there’s no reason for people to leave their encampment, if it’s simply cleanup once a week,” what is being accomplished, asked James.
“At some point we need some political will,” said James noting LHA is currently building more units than it has in a long time.
“We are doing our best, we’re lobbying the provincial government to assist us but we need political will from this municipality to take this to the next step.”
Efforts to help the homeless aren’t about cleaning up garbage once a week and re-setting up tents, said James, but rather about getting people the help they need. She added that stolen property needs to be removed from individuals possessing it, taking away their ability to continue living in an encampment and forcing their hand on getting them into a stable shelter so they can receive needed services.
Lethbridge Police Sergeant Ryan Darroch of the Downtown Policing Unit said the upcoming opening of the transitional housing unit on Stafford Drive North by the LHA is a good option, adding he’s proud of the direction the strategy is moving in.
“Our encampment strategy is top-notch,” said Darroch, who adding the City is doing a bit better than Edmonton but not as well as Calgary on dealing with homelessness.
He said removal of property while taking down an encampment is an “officer pressure point” with the main message of the strategy being compliance and not “to leave so much of a scar on the Earth when they’re gone, especially in the river valley.”
Councillor Belinda Crowson told the SPC of concerns she’s heard from businesses along 2 A Avenue North with bio-waste, loitering and other issues.
Andrew Malcolm, general manager of community social development, said the strategy is solving problems but not all of them. He added initiatives by the YWCA, LHA and other organizations will help to alleviate homelessness, and that all efforts are having an impact.
Since the City’s encampment strategy was approved in 2023, more than 85,000 kilograms of debris have been removed and 2,200 camp-related sites triaged. In the first three months of 2025, 435 structures and 29,020 kilograms of debris were removed. This compares to 569 structures in all of 2024 and 44,900 kg of debris cleaned up.
Bringing outreach services in-house has resulted in a 263 per cent increase in intakes and 318 per cent increase in referrals, says the report.
Between August of 2024 and April of this year, 19 people moved on from homelessness compared to zero in 2023.
Between January and March of this year, 151 complaints were received about encampments. In 2024, there were 925 for the year and 455 in 2023, data from that year including only the months of July through December which reflects when the strategy became operational.
In the first three months of this year, there was a total of 520 confirmed encampments with 322 total number of sites triaged. That figure refers to the total number of encampment and debris complaints responded to by the emergency response team. The figure for all of 2024 was 738 encampments and 1,261 triaged sites.
Total complaints to the City’s 311 number from 2023 through March of this year total 2,938, with 310 in the first three months of this year.
Encampments are broken down into three tiers: Tier 1 are small, low-risk camps with minimal impact while Tier 2 are moderate-sized ones with increasing safety or environmental concerns while Tier 3 consists of large entrenched encampments with significant health or public safety risks.
ERT members and outreach staff last year are trained to carry and administer naxolone, which has been deployed multiple times, says the report.
The response efforts have seen a 27.7 per cent reduction in outdoor fire incidents between 2023 and 2024, due in part to the ERT working with the Lethbridge Fire Emergency Services to remove hazardous materials and engaging in other strategies including fire safety education for camp occupants and co-ordination with fire prevention officers to assess and address high-risk sites.
The ERT has also removed weapons from encampments.
The report notes the City has achieved success aligning its response efforts with broader housing and community well-being goals, citing a key driver of that progress being the hiring of a dedicated housing solutions co-ordinator whose job is funded through the encampment response.
The report says that several trends are expected this year, including that the number of Tier 2 and 3 encampments will increase and that there will be a seasonal dispersal into the river valley and less accessible ares which will require enhanced surveillance and mobility tools. Seasonal shifts require tools such as drones and boats to reach hard-to-access camps, says the report with the police to also use mountain bikes as needed.
The report also states that there has been an increase in people accessing services that support them in leaving homeless as they have become more familiar with the City’s outreach program.
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The strategy was working, and the Outreach Team has been diligent, working hard along side Sgt. Darroch and his team, but there are only so many members, and as soon as multi-agency removal and clean up teams are believed to be no longer in the area, then the same people return. There were no plans to stop them from returning, so that is why it failed.
It became evident at the meeting that management, not the foot soldiers, were passing the buck as well! I applaud some of the committee members for bringing more concerns of other business owners in the area and for asking tough questions! Questions in some cases where leadership became offended it appeared.
Clearly there are gaps that needed to be addressed in the plans, but once again, it appears there are some in administration who are complacent and state ” it is happening everywhere ” . . . well Lethbridge had a handle on it and we had some success in the beginning of 2024! That attitude is what has led to the mess around the shelter and surrounding area!
There is a reduction in complaints because believe no one is listening, as we saw in the small number of people who showed up at the last LPS info session at the multiculural center earlier this year!
In January the update stated ” . . . saw a 195 per cent increase in encampments compared to the same period in 2023. . . .”
Now if this was a corporation, the board of that corporation would have did some research into why and deployed measures to reduce those numbers!
Apparently the complacency of leadership ignored them and that is why we have a massive mess in the shelter area!
The taxpayers are on the hook for all these mistakes! The businesses that are impacted are barely hanging on and some have decided to sue!
Some LPS members have been run ragged, overseeing too many tasks and that impacts the quality of the tasks and it isn’t fair!
It is not fair to the whole Outreach team to go in, move people along, just to watch them return hours later . . . it is a morale killer!
That team, including LPS Sgt Darroch and his DTU, and Robyn James of the Lethbridge Housing Authority has worked tirelessly to prevent such an occurrence and it just isn’t fair they didn’t have the resources or backing of some leadership to make this plan successful. It can be if implemented properly.
The shelter has the capacity, housing is available and the taxpayer and businesses have had enough!
Here is just one plan to consider:
Notify people in encampments there will be zero tolerance for sleeping rough or encamping illegally coming in force in 2 weeks, setting a date and therefore setting parameters, and they should decide where they will go: shelter, housing, their family home, and even back to their own communities where many arrive from each year. Re-enforce the fact that they will not be allowed to sleep rough or set up an encampment anywhere in the city!
Once moved and cleaned, barricade those areas with signs no trespassing, no loitering, no encamping or you will be prosecuted.
To enforce this, have security patrols 24/7 preventing anyone from breaching those areas since we do not have enough LPS or Outreach Team members. The security is not there to make arrests, but to ask people to move on and if they don’t, LPS would be called!
There should be no need to increase Outreach members and all agencies and departments should practise ‘work smarter’ policies!
At the same time, someone needs to confirm those people have a plan before the 2 week deadline, and monitor the people to make sure they are not moving to some obscure, out of sight place: abandoned buildings, coulees, etc.
We have all the resources we need now in LPS and Outreach, but we just have to work smarter and both city administrators and LPS must allow the frontline to do their jobs without binding them!
Will there be encampments after? Of course, but with less, they will be easier to manage!
We need leaders who have the will and are not afraid to make the right decisions!
The upcoming Police Commission meeting should be interesting since the buck was passed to LPS at this SPC meeting!
You are being too kind! As a business owner who has weekly discussions with fellow owners, we believe the city doesn’t care about the business owners loss of revenues and even failures because of the tents, piles of feces, urine puddles by doorways, and ignore us when we complain, but if you are one of the hoodlums who are in the city just because they can get away with all the crime, and the city has given them more rights than the people who work and pay taxes then it is time to wake up Council and the police and let them know who are the people paying their wages and electing them.
I am mad as hell and so are other owners! I feel for those next to the shelter, and it appears that the city wants to kill their business so they can take it over for expansion of the regional shelter plans, which will provide more services and attract more people!
It reminds me of the Supervised Drug Consumption Site we had and no one would listen to the citizens and business owners complaints! How did that work out for the previous Council! We fired most of them but were left with city beaurocrats who road-blocked many efforts to regain our city and our downtown! That deadwood needs to retired if there is any hope! Not much hope left for many, but a lawsuit will wake up city hall!
So, we hear these statistics they throw at us but how can we trust them?
‘A presentation showed that on the night of Oct. 8, 2024, at least 522 people were experiencing homelessness here. Of those 92 were in an emergency shelter, 274 were unsheltered, 65 were in transitional housing and 82 were in institutional settings.’
First, when add those up there are only 513, but why are we counting people in jail, in treatment, couch surfing, etc., area we just trying to inflate those numbers as the Supervised Drug Consumption Site did so they could get more funding? Which organization compiled this data? They city? A private sector company, who has been proven to be reputable, or a non-profit? Who? I don’t trust them!
‘Total complaints to the City’s 311 number from 2023 through March of this year total 2,938, with 310 in the first three months of this year.’
I and many others I know don’t bother calling anymore because they come 2 or 3 days later, move them and hours later they are back.
‘Between August of 2024 and April of this year, 19 people moved on from homelessness compared to zero in 2023′
How many of those 19 moved on from homelessness are still housed? How many are back on the streets?
After viewing this meeting , since I couldn’t attend, I failed to see any acknowledgement of failure, only Andrew Malcolm believing that they are doing a great job, as did LPS!
So from that, you know they don’t have any plans changing how they deal with the encampment issue! I was told Andrew Malcolm doesn’t live in the city! Maybe we could send these people out to where he lives since he fails to understand the issue!
Having attended the latest SPC meeting on Thursday (briefly) it was evident that the root of the unhoused issue is not being adequately and consistently addressed, that being the illegality of encampments. I fully agree with Councillor Middleton/Hope about addressing the criminal aspect. It is NOT about pouring in more money and hiring more “workers” to babysit the encampments. There are tactics that could be deployed like simply flooding encampment areas breaking up the concentration of the tents/structures. Those providing tents etc. should be discouraged and stoped, this is NOT helping those, rather contributing and enabling them. Police need to take a more agressive stance and arrest, issuing tickets and/or warnings are useless.
I agree and that is why we have lost trust in finding change politically and must move forward and use the courts to bring change. We have been beaten up enough and some may even lose their homes, not just their business because of the lack of balls to resolve the problems while these people live lawless freely!
I wonder what it would take for city hall to get the message? Perhaps if it were the Mayor’s business being destroyed, or his family being intimidated or threatened, or perhaps the Chief of Police impacted day after day? There are some administrators at city hall who don’t even live in our city, but in other communities! Businesses impacted now have a good record of their losses over the past few years and a record of the concerns brought forward to our great leaders! The stage is set!
The property tax increases should have shook up people. If people only knew: the city will never divulge what the annual expenditures are in dealing with these issues on our streets.
A friend did try to get the actual costs in a FOIP request but was unsuccessful in our ‘transparent’ city hall, and they were going to charge him $1200 for that information and stated it would be incomplete because they do not track the costs. Conservative estimates are over $10 million per year!
But if you get a great salary with the city, who cares about us peons, or should I say pee-ons!
Thank you Councillor Middleton-Hope for your push for answers, honest answers! I think they deflected some of the questions but you get 10 out of 10 for pushing!
Yes, Higgins should have to move his business to 2nd avenue and Stafford drive north. Or even better lets move city hall there.
Who are the persons advising the decision makers at the city hall? Academics who look at textbooks and are not in the center of the crisis? The highly compensated administrators of non-profit organizations that profit from this problem and are opposed to its resolution?
This Robin James seems to be in the thick of things and has some insightful recommendations! Does anybody hear her? There are other authors that seem to know too!
Based on all the information provided, it appears to be fairly basic! Put the laws into effect, action is required!
Both my husband and I have served, deployed frequently, and we simply cannot comprehend the thoughts of this city’s top brass! They would be replaced if this were the military!
We purchased a home in the London Road neighborhood when we first relocated to southern Alberta because we thought it would be a wonderful place to raise our soon-to-be teenagers. With all of the problems involving these homeless folks, we were gone in less than two years. Although we lost almost $10,000 in the transfer and home sale, it was worthwhile, and our kids, who are now both teenagers, are safe in the little hamlet outside of Lethbridge where we no longer have any of these problems. We are also enjoying the move!
What are the reasons behind the individuals and business owners’ complicity? Have they given up?
The business owners did give up calling police and calling in encampments, but some also fear they will create tension with police or Silly Hall and in some cases lose the tiny dollars given to them under programs developed to assist some business. The amounts are miniscule compared to the losses!
Another poor plan that attempts to put a bandaid on the problem while ignoring the primary problem, which is the encampments and criminals.
We drove around the areas in question several times in the last 2 days and found a reduction in encampments! I had coffee with a friend who lives by the service station in question who said the issues overnight had diminished.
Why do the citizens have to raise Hell to get change? We need a leadership review at Silly Hall! The elected officials need to start asking tougher questions why the public feels programs are failing while the people operating those programs feel they are operating just fine!
How long before the issues return as bad or worse? I have zero faith right now and the trust has to be earned back!
Spoke too soon, the encampments are rebuilding! Yep this sure is a success! Saw Mr. Malcolm in the CTV news once again stating it was a success, yet the one right under his nose at the old YMCA site has been there for several days! Yep Mr. Malcolm, we can see just how much of a success it is! Did I say right under your nose!
Wow, Belinda Crowson told the SPC of concerns she has heard from business owners. Again, wow,thanks Crowson. You have been hearing about all these concerns for years! Yet you give lip service to it like it is something new. I think we should be expecting a little more than that from All of our councilors.
The shelter is often half empty in the summer. Building a bigger shelter won’t change that. We can build and spend all the money our taxpayers can ill afford, as a significant portion of the street- people/addicts do not want to follow the rules at the shelter. Therefore they will not go there. They won’t follow the rules of housing continuum’s either. It interferes with their lifestyles and criminal activity. The councilors know this, Robin James knows this and the cops especially know this.
Robin James knows this, yet keeps repeating this housing continuum dream.
Does that dream support a number of organizations empire building dream?
When we had the SCS (we have had a smaller one by the shelter since the SCS mansion was closed down)the organization running it paid for housing for many of their clients. They paid the damage deposit and the first few months rent to private landlords. These clients didn’t last long after the neighborhood and landlord found these units just became party/drug houses. The SCS managers lost a large amount of our money on this strategy.
Will the closure of the shelter on the Blood reserve and close to a hundred boarded up houses on the Reserve- have any affect on this situation?
Again, you can build and increase the size of rules based shelters and housing- it will do nothing for the volume of addicts who want the freedom to enjoy their lifestyles – drugs and criminal activity to support their drugs.
One of the very few people quoted here that makes much sense is Middleton-Hope. Whether these people are in an encampment or a housing dream home continuum- criminal activity will be the order of the day. If you think the cost and damage to people and property to clear/clean up encampments is expensive, go visit a drug house. Whether this drug house /unit is part of the housing continuum dream or not , the cost (both in damage to people and property) doesn’t go away.
Some good points Montreal13! The people who make the decisions do not look at the costs to us!
One of the biggest mistakes is leadership compares Lethbridge to other cities, and by doing so, the mentality evolves that because other cities have these problems, then I guess we will just have to allow it!
We had the beginnings of a good strategy, but when leadership thinks like this, it filters all the way down to the boots on the ground, and ways to prevent Lethbridge from becoming like other cities are never a thought!
We were on the right track but have started to go down another rabbit hole, which is costing the taxpayers millions! The sad part is that the city is not tracking all the costs related to these issues, all the contractors, non-profits, cleanup crews, and how many structures were lost this year so far or damaged from fires caused by the people in question?
One business is still displaced on third avenue from the fire 3 months ago in the condo unit above it which was caused by one of the people in question and another recent one was over by the No Frills on the northside!
People are angry and the ones who were against increasing the police budget are now saying ‘ what did we tell you, we said it won’t help ‘ and I suspect the outcry to reduce the police budget will again be heard!
I know Robyn James is working hard in her duties and if you sat down to speak with her, you might understand we are all working towards the same thing, and she is doing what she has been told to do, but still calls out areas that need to be addressed, but no one listens!
Robyn cannot force the people to go into the shelter or any other accommodation and is frustrated as well!
Councilor Middleton-hope is correct when he suggested law enforcement deals with the criminality and breach of laws!
The laws are being broken, so who do you call? Ghostbusters?