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.