The City of Edmonton has spent nearly $225,000 on fencing off former encampment sites in the first nine months of 2024. In the entirety of last year, by contrast, the city spent just over $3,400 fencing off former encampment sites.
The practice of putting up six-foot tall metal fencing around former encampment sites and restricting access to public lands after an encampment sweep started in earnest in January 2024. At that time, the Edmonton Police Service, in concert with the City of Edmonton and Government of Alberta, started an aggressive campaign against unhoused people sleeping in tents.
A fenced off space of a former encampment site next to a multi-use trail by the LRT tracks between 95th and 96th streets in downtown Edmonton. In the background two city of Edmonton workers are seen taking trash from a former encampment site and throwing it into their truck. Photo by Duncan Kinney.
At the same time, the province launched its downtown navigation centre. The provincial government refuses to release data on how many people have been housed after visiting the navigation centre.
“It’s so awful. I just can't believe it,” said Judith Gale of Bear Claw, an Indigenous- led mutual aid group that does street outreach. “That the city spent all of the money putting up fences just so that people could be stopped from putting up shelter. It’s just unconscionable.”
Chris Wiebe, a lawyer who has represented the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights, a group that unsuccessfully sued the City of Edmonton over its encampment sweeps policy earlier this year, called the funding “counterproductive.”
“This money could have been spent on known solutions like adequate housing and shelter. Instead, the city chooses to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on something that not only prevents our neighbors who are unhoused from using the land but all of us from using the land,” said Wiebe.
Of the nearly $225,000 spent on fencing off former encampment sites, $107,000 of that amount came through a Government of Alberta funding grant for purchasing the fencing.
City councillor Michael Janz noted that while the provincial government is willing to pay to fence off public places, it still hasn’t paid $80 million it owes the city in property taxes, nor has it reimbursed the city $2.2 million in provincially mandated expenses related to the 2023 shigella outbreak.
“I can’t think of a more apt metaphor for this provincial government,” said the ward Papastew councillor.
“It’s frustrating because all it does is shuffle people around. Putting up a fence doesn’t give people living on the street a house. They need four walls and a roof, not a fence.”
Wiebe suspects the cost of fencing is a small fraction of the total costs associated with the city’s “scorched-earth tactics on encampments.”
“When you factor in EPS and Sheriff time, peace officer time, city operations staff time, vehicles, gas, and tipping fees I can only assume we’re looking at multiple millions of dollars,” he said.
Noting that upwards of 65 per cent of Edmonton’s homeless population is Indigenous, Wiebe said these actions “violate the spirit of Treaty 6 — to share the land between settlers and Indigenous people.”
In a statement to the Progress Report, a city spokesperson called the fencing “a crucial part of our work to maintain safety during and after encampment resolutions.”
The City of Edmonton, the provincial government and the Edmonton Police Service have signaled no incoming changes to encampment sweeps or any changes to dealing with increased homelessness. According to the latest available numbers from Homeward Trust, homelessness has increased in Edmonton in 2024 by 47 per cent.
Documents obtained via Freedom of Information requests by the Coalition for Justice and Human Rights reveal that frostbite injuries and amputations for people with no fixed address spiked to the highest levels ever seen in early 2024, when the encampment evictions were at their peak.
The navigation centre, the UCP government’s crown jewel in their plan to address homelessness, is rarely used by unhoused people.
Gale of Bear Claw reports that Edmonton police’s street practices have changed somewhat since earlier this year, but she doesn’t know what will happen this coming winter.
“When the sweeps were at their worst, people couldn’t put up a tent and were sleeping under tarps, using cardboard for makeshift shelters. Around July, the cops started letting people put up a tent at night but they’d be there right at 7 a.m. making sure you took it down,” said Gale.
“But this $225,000 needs to be spent ensuring that not a single more community member loses another toe, hand, leg or foot to frostbite … or worse. A fence won’t stop another brother or sister from freezing to death this winter.”