Waterloo Region has squandered a fortune trying to block housing rights

This opinion was first published on Maytree’s Substack.

CTV News has reported that Waterloo Region has spent almost $1.9 million to avoid having to help unhoused people find a place to live. The legal bills were uncovered by a freedom of information request by a candidate for regional council.

In a well-reported case, the Region wanted to build a transit hub where unhoused people had set up tents, a location otherwise unused and out of the way. The Region passed a bylaw outlawing the encampment, which was successfully challenged in court. The court ruling said the Region had an obligation to provide an alternative site to people in the encampment and could then use the site for the transit facility.

The Region spent almost $1.7 million on a Toronto law firm and another $27,113 on legal aid costs for encampment residents. This is on top of the previous $168,842 the Region had paid in 2023 related to legal advice to clear an encampment on the same site.

The $1.9 million is only the legal fees related to the clearance efforts. There are likely significant administrative costs incurred by the Region for staff time, police enforcement, and other municipal services. They are likely substantial.

The Waterloo Region’s decision to pursue legal means amounts to a waste of tax dollars when it could have used the same money to fund actual solutions that work. Other municipalities have made more responsible choices.

Peterborough spent $2.45 million to create the Wolfe Street modular community (now called The Crossing). Fifty cabins, shared washrooms, and a service hub. Thunder Bay spent just over $2 million in municipal funds matched by $2.8 million in external funds to build an 80-unit village with private heated/cooled accommodation and shared services. But Thunder Bay also paid just $208,000 to create designated encampment sites separate from the more permanent planned village. The more ambitious effort in London’s Community Encampment Response Plan cost the municipality about $6.4 million over 2 years with an additional $5 million from the federal government.

So, it’s clear Waterloo Region had options for around the same cost and chose instead to pursue a costly eviction that created unknown further pain and suffering and costs.

It seems callous for the Region to be so intent on kicking people when they are down. People living in encampments aren’t there by choice, nor are they rebellious scofflaws. They have no choice. Canadian governments have failed at all levels in their duty to protect people and to have a housing system that can serve all. They have failed to comply with their international and national commitments to recognize housing as a human right, commitments that obligate all levels of government, including the Region of Waterloo.

One of the features of supporting a human right such as housing is to use “all available resources.” This doesn’t mean conjuring money from the ether, but a reasonable effort to find a way to pay for housing for all. In the Waterloo case, it should mean allocating all those legal fees and other costs to creating the housing that would be an alternative to people in encampments.

A safe, secure, and affordable place to live, to call “home,” is the basis on which a life can be built. It is the basis on which work can be found, health issues dealt with, school can be attended, and a community of support can grow. The intentional denial of a home, a denial mounted at great expense, is a failure of government, of humanity, and of care. But it seems the Waterloo Region would rather litigate than accommodate.