Opinion: Torn-down Regina city hall homeless camp likely saved lives

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The camp began with an event at Pepsi Park to mark the one-year anniversary of the day Regina city council voted unanimously to include funding to end homelessness in the upcoming municipal budget

Trying to help the city’s homeless, we volunteers erected a canopy in the park. We were quickly informed by the city that day that this camp violated a bylaw.

With no plan in mind other than the knowledge something had to be done, we took the canopy to city hall, which one of our houseless community members told us was “a safe haven.”

The encampment grew quickly. As quickly, it became a community. It was built on a sense of solidarity through action. This camp saved lives because naloxone-trained volunteers were doing hourly wellness checks to avert potentially fatal overdoses.

Overdoses caused by toxic and tainted drugs would have otherwise happened in back alleys and other spaces far from anyone who could immediately administer life-saving treatment.

We were usually able to provide three meals a day, snacks and water to people who otherwise would have struggled to find such life necessities.

But we also understood that we needed to do more than just meet the day-to-day material needs. We needed to get people housed. We needed to address the individual traumas and systemic failures that had left them unhoused in the first place.

In full communication and co-operation with residents, volunteers co-ordinated with the patchwork of government and community-based organizations to get people who needed drug and alcohol treatment into treatment centres and to connect the people that were living in tents health care, social workers and harm reduction support.

Everyone who ended up living at the camp had their own journey that led them there. Some — but far from all — had substance use disorders and mental health conditions.

Many were dealing with intergenerational trauma from residential schools. One resident fell into addictions after his wife was murdered and has been struggling with his grief that was compounded by the trauma of addictions and homelessness.

Another resident received his settlement money from residential day school, but promptly had his SAID entitlements revoked, and lost his housing.

Everyone’s story was unique, but everyone was there because of the same systemic failures. These failures remain, despite Regina Mayor Sandra Masters attempts to make them less visible.

In the days after the camp was shuttered on July 28, volunteers drove city streets, searching for encampment residents. They tried to make sure everyone had food, water, essential medications, rides to appointments and the other necessaries of life that had previously been provided from a central location.

We let each other know who we had found, their condition and what, if anything, we had been able to do for them. We did this because these are our community members, people we care about.

We did this because we know they aren’t different from us, that under the exploitative capitalist system we live in, we are all much closer to becoming unhoused ourselves. There was trauma and pain and occasionally even violence, but much more frequently there was camaraderie, solidarity and laughter.

There were inside jokes between residents and volunteers. People played music, shared cigarettes, made art and talked about their children and grandchildren.

The encampment was a makeshift community, but it was a real community. And now, instead of being together, this community is scattered.The daily work of keeping people fed and ensuring they have access to the sparse resources that exist for poor people has become that much harder.

But we are still here. We will continue to search for our siblings from the camp on the streets and meet them where they’re at, with nothing but respect for them.

The end of the encampment at city hall is a setback, but it is not the end of the line. We will continue this work until every houseless person has a place of their own. We owe it to ourselves and to one another to build something better. We are still here. And we are not stopping.

Submitted by camp volunteer Alex Birrell on behalf of several volunteers who served at the city hall homeless encampment.