5 days ago
'It feels like there's no hope': Many homeless don't want a home. What now?
Brent Secondiuk served as a front-line cop in the southern Alberta city of Medicine Hat for 25 years, and understands the futility of dismantling homeless encampments and otherwise dislodging itinerants who decide to bunk down in public spaces.
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'We used to call it leaf-blowing … you just scatter the leaves, and the leaves end up somewhere else,' he says.
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The most frustrating part, though: Medicine Hat has housing available for the homeless.
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'You can be home if you want to,' he laments. 'You just choose not to when it's nice outside,' he says of itinerants who prefer to live rough.
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'Years ago,' Brent explains, 'we had little to no homeless people, because we had housing available. And I know we still do today. If anybody downtown wanted to get housed, they would be, in 24-48 hours.'
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In 2015, Medicine Hat proudly pronounced itself the first city in Canada to 'functionally end' chronic homelessness. The city's housing-first approach — making permanent, stable housing available to the homeless, without pre-conditions — earned Medicine Hat the gold star in the battle against homelessness.
'I think announcing we had zero homeless brought more people here,' Brent acknowledges with a chuckle. Transients would come in from other jurisdictions, assuming Medicine Hat must have all sorts of available housing programs. 'The problem,' Brent continues, 'is a lot of them, especially in the summer when it's nice outside and you can sleep rough outdoors,' turn down the housing because it comes with rules.
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'And it became trendy to live outdoors and live rough,' Brent explains, 'and it just started and snowballed … if person A is doing it, why can't person B? So it just compounded and got us to where we are now.'
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Brent doesn't know the exact numbers but estimates there are probably 30 to 40 itinerant people living in the two big parks in Medicine Hat's river valley. While he suspects not all are technically homeless — a few will be tied to that social network, but go back to their residences at night — the numbers are still higher than they've ever been, Brent says, 'and it looks bad.'
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To respond to an uptick in the number of homeless encampments in Medicine Hat, local police launched a 'peace team' a few years back. Brent's optimistic view? That focused approach helped, but there are still people who don't want to live in a home or emergency shelter.
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And for front-line officers — cleaning up garbage and human waste and needles in tents, and continuously checking for fire risk in a hot, dry place like Medicine Hat where a single spark could set off a fire in the entire river valley — it felt like a losing battle, Brent admits.
