In this episode, Hannah McGurk, (she/her) who completed her Masters degree in the Applied Politics program at Laurier, shares her research findings from a report that analyses municipal responses to homeless encampments. The report emerged from a community-engaged research project with the Region of Waterloo and provides a comparison of encampment protocols among six municipalities, through a human rights lens. As part of her graduate degree, McGurk specialized in Canadian housing policy and co-authored an article on the regulation of unsheltered homelessness in Canada. McGurk’s research has been sought after by the Region of Waterloo and non-profit organizations, including the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness.
The episode features:
WLU Research Chat S03 Hannah v2
Shawna Reibling 00:04
Welcome to the third season of Research Chat. In this season graduate students share the challenges of their research work. In this episode, Emily Kraemer will interview Hannah McGurk.
Shawna Reibling 00:15
Emily Kraemer, who uses pronouns she her, is a recent graduate from the Masters of Applied politics program at Wilfrid Laurier University. She specialized in Legal Studies in her undergraduate degree and has a special interest in international relations and geopolitics. She is engaged in equity, diversity and inclusion otherwise known as EDI policy creation and research during her graduate research practicum at the city of Waterloo.
Shawna Reibling 00:42
Emily holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Wilfrid Laurier University alongside her Master of Applied politics. She is passionate about the environment evidenced by her work with environmental political organizations such as GreenPAC.
Shawna Reibling 00:55
Hannah McGurk, who uses pronouns she her is a recent graduate of the Master of Applied politics program at Wilfrid Laurier University during her graduate degree and is specialized in Canadian housing policy and co authored an article on the regulation of unsheltered homelessness in Canada.
Shawna Reibling 01:11
Her research has been sought after by the Region of Waterloo, and other nonprofit organizations such as the Canadian Observatory for Homelessness, the Right to National Housing Network and the Peterborough Drug Strategy.
Shawna Reibling 01:24
Hannah previously received her undergraduate degree from Wilfrid Laurier University, and Her research interests include housing and public policy.
Shawna Reibling 01:33
Thank you to you both for chatting with me today. It is a Master's of applied politics powerhouse for these two episodes. Thank you for sharing how both your research projects address urgent local government level issues that are impacted by growing homelessness and changing community demographics.
Shawna Reibling 01:49
Your research projects are both very applied and applicable in our local communities. Emily's research is focused on concrete ways to measure progress as city governments change to reflect the diversity of the citizens it governs. This episode will focus on Hannah's research on using a human rights based approach to create encampment related policy. I will now turn the microphone over to you Emily to learn more about Hannah's research.
Emily Kraemer 02:22
Hi, Hannah, thank you so much for chatting with me about your research today. Can you tell me about the partnership where this research emerged from?
Hannah McGurk 02:31
For sure. So I worked as part of a very talented research team comprised of other Master of Applied politics students, and the purpose of the research was to examine how municipalities can respond to encampments in their communities. We were supervised at the time by Dr. Laura Pin. So the region's always looking for ways to reform bylaws and policy to find external resources that they can use for their research. And of course, for this particular area, they were looking for research on how to effectively respond to the homeless encampment situation in the Waterloo community.
Emily Kraemer 03:12
So what issues or questions did you or do you plan to explore in your research?
Hannah McGurk 03:17
Our main focus was to provide insight for how municipalities can respond to encampments in their own communities. And so the sort of principle that we were using as a basis for beginning our research was that housing is first and foremost, a human right. And so by law should align with that consideration to engage basic human rights principles when they're responding to encampments in their own communities. We saw our research as an opportunity to provide recommendations that municipalities could then use to develop their own protocols that respected the human rights of encampment residents, as well as responding to the concerns of the broader public.
Emily Kraemer 03:57
So you frequently discussed the criminalization of homelessness in your research. Could you explain what criminality refers to in this context?
Hannah McGurk 04:06
Even prior to commencing our research, we knew that it's not uncommon for people to use criminalizing language when referring to individuals experiencing homelessness, thinking of them as violators of the law. And so we wanted to provide education around the societal misconceptions regarding encampments. And I'm not just referring to what we hear in the media. Even at the provincial level, there's existing regulations such as the Ontario Safe Streets Act 1999. That criminalizes homelessness and reinforces this stereotype.
Hannah McGurk 04:40
For those who might not be familiar with the act. It clearly targets homeless individuals creating increased tension with law enforcement. And so when we use criminalizing language such as the language display throw this act, we ignore the structural factors contributing to homelessness, and we deny residents the human right to access things like adequate food, housing, sanitation, we also overlook the intersection here with mental illness or addiction. So a lot of people experiencing homelessness tend to suffer from these things. And they're further stigmatized as people who bear the responsibility for this further issues, rather than placing responsibility on the systemic factors that have marginalized people into the homeless situation in the first place.
Hannah McGurk 05:30
So regulations like these at the provincial level, or the municipal level, and policies such as these further marginalize those experiencing homelessness, and they don't help municipalities addressing campaigns in a way that really recognizes the human rights of homeless folks.
Emily Kraemer 05:47
Could you give an example of how the criminalization plays out in the community?
Hannah McGurk 05:52
Sure. So I think with community members as well as law enforcement, we mimic what we see in the media, or how homeless people are portrayed in the media or in the news. And so on a municipal level, we might ban things like sleeping on park benches overnight, or things like loitering in public were, these are types of things that someone who does not have a private place to as well, almost has no other option, but to do these things. And so that's just one example of how criminalization plays out in the community. It shouldn't be a crime, just to exist in the community. So could you tell me a little bit about why people living in cabinets. So sometimes there's not a choice to live in encampments, especially in the winter months, there tends to be a lack of space, or availability in shelters, at least not as a long term living situation. What Another case is people choose to live in an encampment over living in a shelter rather than living in a shelter. And there are several reasons as to why they choose to do so. But some of them include more freedom for residents and encampments, they have the ability to come and go as they please.
Hannah McGurk 07:17
In the shelter system there are things like curfews and restrictions as to your physical state. For example, there needs to be sobriety in a lot of shelters where that's not something that people need to tend to be when they're living in an encampment. There's also a sense of security that's absent for folks living in shelters, and encampments, a lot of residents, or at least what we have discovered in our research, have voiced that they feel a sense of community, among the other residents living in encampments. And so when you have this high turnover, in shelters, you don't have a connection with the people you're living with.
Hannah McGurk 08:00
And so, encampment sort of provides that ability to create this almost internal community in an encampment setting. When we think about families, and shelters, a lot of times there are restrictions on who can live in shelters. So some only admit females and children. There are male only shelters. And so this makes it really difficult for people who are non binary to live in a shelter or stay in a shelter, and even for families to stay together.
Emily Kraemer 08:35
Could you describe how you explained your research question?
Hannah McGurk 08:39
We consulted for our own swans national protocol for homeless encampments in Canada, which was produced by former United Nations special repertoire on the right to adequate housing. And so this protocol advocates for a government response to encampments, that is really grounded in human rights principles, for example, ensuring meaningful engagement and the participation of residents, ensuring that if residents are being relocated, that this is done in a human rights compliant way. And that eviction is really seen as the last resort.
Hannah McGurk 09:16
I think when we discuss housing and land, it's also really important to recognize the forced displacement of indigenous peoples from these lands. When referring to the Waterloo Region specifically, this includes the failure to honor the Halderman Treaty of 74 and the displacement of six nations of the Grand River from treaty territory in the region. So keeping this in mind for Antoine also recognize that when dealing with encampment residents who are also indigenous, these folks have distinct rights and are extremely over represented in communities of unsheltered populations.
Hannah McGurk 09:52
To provide the comparative analysis for government officials. We applied these principles the principles in the Nash tunnel protocol to municipalities across Canada with existing encampment protocols. So we sought out municipalities that had protocols in place, or protocols that we thought were reflected best practices and recommendations for policies that they could also adopt.
Emily Kraemer 10:18
What are some of the challenges that you face throughout your research?
Hannah McGurk 10:23
Finding the protocols was definitely challenging. So we wanted to discover protocols that the region could use for other municipalities that were of like size to Waterloo. So for example, a protocol for the City of Toronto might not be a direct type of protocol to use for the Region of Waterloo to come up with their own, you know, being the difference in demographics, and city size and things like that. So those were two things that we took into consideration, and then trying to come up with a way to analyze protocols once we found them. So we ended up relying on Cohen et al. typology, which places encampments into four different categories.
Hannah McGurk 11:14
So you have clearance with little to no support, where residents encampments are only given a few days, notice that there's going to be an encampment sweep. And so they don't have many referrals, or many places to go to once that encampment is swept by the municipal government.
Hannah McGurk 11:34
You also have as a second category clearance with support. So residents are given notice of sweeps, there's long term storage for them to place their belongings, and they have referrals as to where to go next, you know, what are some possible housing or subsidized housing options for them to turn to, but with this, this category, you still have a very high involvement of law enforcement or of the police.
Hannah McGurk 12:03
And so the third category that we researched in in Cohen et al.'s typology was tacit acceptance. And with tacit acceptance, encampments persist, regardless of laws. There's actually basic services that are provided in the encampments, like running water facilities to use the washroom, and there's less police involvement with fees.
Hannah McGurk 12:27
But really, the category that we saw that was most relative for the Region of Waterloo was formal sanctioning them. So permitting them by law on either public or private property, and providing the infrastructure for people to be able to dwell in these encampments. And so sort of the long, we tried to find protocols that fit into one of these four categories, to give the Region of Waterloo an example of what we meant by these different responses to encampments.
Emily Kraemer 13:02
Why is it helpful to categorize responses into these categories?
Hannah McGurk 13:07
We wanted to provide the Region of Waterloo at the time a way to be able to compare what municipalities are doing, because that was the initial research question was, What is everyone else doing? How can we take their learnings and apply it to develop our own encampment protocol. And so we wanted to provide an academic basis for here's a typology or here's responses to encampments that we're seeing in literature. And here are some real life examples or some examples of what other cities are doing, and how they may or may not fall into one of these four categories. Here's how you can inform your protocol.
Emily Kraemer 13:51
What are the next steps in your work?
Hannah McGurk 13:54
So the next steps for us as a research group is to monitor the encampment situation in the region. And hopefully, we will see them come up with a protocol that takes into account the research that we have done. A protocol that hopefully hand in hand also provides solutions to the broader housing or lack of housing problem, not just in Waterloo, but in cities across Canada.
Hannah McGurk 14:26
But for this project. Specifically, we want to see how they are coupling both their encampment protocols and their subsidized or affordable housing plan. And so we'll be helping out wherever we need to but we're at a point in our research now where we're observing to to really be able to see the impact the real life impact that our research has had on the region and other municipalities.
Emily Kraemer 14:54
Can you place your research and the broader context of addressing homelessness in Ontario cities?
Hannah McGurk 15:00
Yes, I think it's really important to mention that encampments are a direct effects of a lack of housing, or affordable housing. So for cities to develop an encampment protocol, they also need to be developing a housing plan for our folks who are looking for housing.
Emily Kraemer 15:26
What should listeners remember about responses to encampments?
Hannah McGurk 15:29
Municipalities should take a human rights based approach when creating policy to interact with encampment residents. It it's as simple as encampment residents, just as you and I have human rights.
Emily Kraemer 15:44
Is there anything about your research that you feel is important to share?
Hannah McGurk 15:48
Our research was done not for the Region of Waterloo specifically, to be able to develop their own and Canon protocol. But a large portion of our research was about the misconceptions, and the criminalization of homelessness, and really trying to debunk those myths about people experiencing homelessness, and inform people about the structural barriers that might push someone into homelessness that we often do not think about day to day.
Emily Kraemer 16:22
How was this research driving responses to encampments?
Hannah McGurk 16:25
So since we have shared this report with the Region of Waterloo, we have as a research group, and following what we've heard in city council meeting minutes, to sort of see what surfaces based on encampments in the Waterloo Region and how they've been responding to them. Since we have finished this report. We've also heard from some nonprofit organizations such as the Canadian observatory for homelessness, who's interested in sharing it on their website, as well for municipalities to use and visit when they are developing their own protocol or perhaps even updating the ones that they might already have.
Hannah McGurk 17:10
We've also heard from the Peterborough drug strategy, who's trying again, as I mentioned before, to try to inform the public on the intersection of addiction and homelessness, to really help with that criminalization aspects, which is a huge part of the literature piece of our research. Even more recently, in fact, this past January, there was an extremely significant decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that really emphasizes the relevance of this research and policy, and establishes a precedent for municipalities in terms of responses to their own encampment situations.
Hannah McGurk 17:55
So for those familiar with the encampment on Victoria Street in downtown Kitchener, the Region of Waterloo put forth an application to have the tents and living spaces removed from the property. In other words, if we think back to cocoanut all's responses to encampments, the region is looking to clear the encampment with support, as they believe that residents are in violation of existing bylaws regarding public conduct on regionally owned property by what the courts found was that this isn't actually the case. And that removing the Victoria Street and Cameron, residents from the property would actually violate their section seven rights under the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. So this is the section of the charter that recognizes the right to life, liberty and security of the person. And more specifically, what the courts found in review of the region's application was that trying to enforce an eviction of encampment residents would violate their rights because of the lack of alternative shelter space in the Waterloo Region, and the lack of accessible shelter space that actually meets the needs of current encampment residents.
Hannah McGurk 19:03
In other words, what we have here, or what has been established by this decision, is the categorization by law, that encampment management is, in fact, a human rights issue.
Emily Kraemer 19:16
You worked as part of a group of graduate researchers, how did this impact your research and the final report?
Hannah McGurk 19:20
I think working with a group of researchers really allowed us all to emphasize our strengths in the different sections that we chose to hone in on. So as part of the criminality section, we had a student who had some experience working with folks that we tend to criminalize in nature. This student had a background in criminology, and so that really helped with our research and sort of providing that personal experience with the academic information. We also had a student who worked with the city of Waterloo previously, and she worked for housing providers. So she had a lot of information on subsidizing housing and employed a human rights based approach in her own work experience. And so I think that really shines through in the final product.
Hannah McGurk 20:22
So if anything, the working in a group, yes was difficult, because you need to make sure that everyone's aligned, everyone's on the same page. You're not being repetitive in the things that you're addressing. But working together with a team, at least, both academically and professionally is a skill that I'll take with me in my future.
Emily Kraemer 20:44
It was great speaking with you today, Hannah. It was a real pleasure to learn about your research. So thank you so much for sharing it.
Hannah McGurk 20:50
Thank you so much for having me. It was really such a pleasure to be given the forum to discuss such important issues.
Shawna Reibling 20:56
Thank you to you both for sharing your research, you both been engaging in important issues at the local government level. providing evidence is so important as governments and citizens alike grapple with the futures of their communities as they change and are impacted by growing homelessness and changing community demographics. Thank you for engaging in these issues that affect the places we work, live and play.
Shawna Reibling 21:27
I hope you enjoyed listening to today's discussion. Listeners like you are encouraged to share these episodes and use these podcasts to discuss these topics with your friends, community members, or as an assignment in the classroom. If you want to learn more about measuring EDI progress in communities or homeless encampments, there are resources additional readings and details about the work of each researcher on our website wlu.ca/research-chat. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform to be notified of new research chat episodes.
Shawna Reibling 22:01
Research Chat is a partnership between the Office of Research Services, the faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies and the Laurier Library.
Shawna Reibling 22:10
Thank you to everyone who's contributed to the creation of Research chat. A gratitude list can be found on our webpage.