Depending on where you stand, the city skyline looks quite different these days. Sure, there are the expected looming frames of glass skyrises, the dark outlines of factories pumping out products 24/7, and quaint suburban homes spread across the landscape.
But something else is hidden among the architecture. Something small that doesn't quite fit the picture. Something you may not see unless you look closely. Unless you seek it out.
The tents first appeared in large numbers during the pandemic—dotted along rail corridors, under highway overpasses, and in municipal parks that once hosted family festivals. Encampments—groups of tents that have become permanent residences for individuals and families—are now the most visible symbol of the ongoing Canadian housing crisis.
They are also the source of endless debate across the country. Governments have still not decided what encampments truly represent: a humanitarian emergency, a public-order problem, or the inevitable shadow of a housing market that prices people out of existence.
According to the data, this is an escalating housing crisis. The real question is: Why is public policy so slow to follow?
1. The Scale No One Can Agree On
Counting homelessness in Canada is a methodological minefield, and the numbers themselves are highly political. The most cited national estimate is decades old: roughly 200,000 people experience homelessness in some form in a given year. This includes the hidden homeless: couch-surfers and families doubled up in apartments never meant for them.
On any given night, advocates estimate that roughly 30,000 Canadians are visibly homeless, while several times that number remain hidden from view.
What remains uncontested is the trend line: visible homelessness in Canada is rising. Encampments are expanding, and the average age of their residents is increasing. As severe shortages in affordable and social housing push individuals onto the streets, homelessness is no longer a crisis of the margins—it is a structural failure of the housing market and a symptom of Broader Canadian Economic Shifts and real estate market pressures.
2. Encampment Math: Why Evictions Don't Work
Municipal data tells a compelling story. Calgary, a city with a coordinated homelessness response often considered a national model, logged 6,701 service requests about encampments in the first ten months of 2024. That represented a 24 percent increase over the same period the previous year and nearly seven times higher than in 2018.
That same year, Calgary city crews discovered an underground tunnel system holding an encampment beneath the city—a quiet reminder that when above-ground space is closed off, the housing crisis does not disappear; it burrows.
This pattern repeats across every major Canadian city:
More tents
More public complaints
More municipal evictions
More people returning to the street
Fewer services
Eviction without permanent housing and accessible services and support is not a solution—it is a costly cycle of displacement.
3. The Human Face of Homelessness in Canada
The people living in encampments are not a separate class of citizens. They are regular people who lost a job and subsequently lost their home. They are young adults who aged out of foster care, patients discharged from hospitals without a housing plan, and individuals whose disability benefits fall thousands of dollars short of average market rents.
These are mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons. The historical stereotype of the deranged or dangerous villain is outdated; today, it is increasingly replaced by working individuals and families.
Overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples
It is important to note that indigenous people are largely overrepresented in Canadian homelessness statistics by a factor of three or more relative to their share of the population. This serves as a living ledger of a century of policies that removed Indigenous people from their traditional lands and communities. The tents dotting your Canadian city are not just a real estate story; they are part of Canada’s oldest unresolved history.
4. Legal Standoffs and High Costs: Municipal Binds
City councils find themselves trapped by forces they did not create. On one side, residents demand the removal of encampments from public spaces. On the other side, Canadian courts increasingly rule that clearing people from their only shelter—when no suitable alternatives exist—violates their fundamental human rights.
This creates a legal and financial standoff:
High Municipal Expenses: Cities spend millions on security, cleanup crews, and legal fees.
Unaddressed Root Causes: The underlying cause—a massive shortage of affordable housing—can only be fixed by provincial and federal governments. See our breakdown of How Canadian Politics and Jurisdiction Works
Repeated Cycles: Without senior government intervention, we see that municipalities continue to waste funds mismanaging the symptoms rather than fixing the issue.
It is not all bad. Some municipalities are trying innovative approaches to housing, including sanctioned encampment sites with wrapped-around services, tiny-home villages, and modular housing units. These initiatives reflect a hard-won realization: a "Housing First" approach that provides unconditional shelter is far cheaper than the combined costs of emergency room visits, police interventions, and paramedic calls.
5. What the Housing Files Reveal
Review the encampment reports from any Canadian municipality, and the same evidence recurs: people accept housing when it is offered to them without rigid prerequisites, and they maintain it when supportive services are provided.
The cost of housing an individual is a fraction of the cost of managing their ongoing homelessness. The encampments themselves serve as a real-time visual map of the gap between existing housing supply and actual public need.
The solution is neither mysterious nor purely municipal. It requires sustained, non-market housing built at scale with integrated support services—funded primarily at the provincial and federal levels.
The Tents Are the Waitlist
Every encampment in Canada poses a clear and direct question: Where are these people supposed to go?
To date, public policy has responded with bylaws, evictions, and cleanup crews—everything except permanent housing. Yet the question persists, returning more urgently each year.
There will always be a administrative reason to clear the next encampment. However, the cycle will remain endless until the strategy shifts. Clearing an encampment should not mean relocating people—it should mean housing them.
The tents will come down when the housing goes up. Until then, they are not merely an eyesore; they are a public progress report... and right now, we are failing.
