You can also demand:

-A community Housing Justice meeting be convened that includes encampment residents and others affected by the issue at hand

You can also write a letter to the editor in the local news + tell these decision makers that you, a voter, does not support forced displacement.

You can advocate for immediate action by emailing [email protected] demanding:

-alternative sheltering/camping options be made available NOW
-funding for local outreach and support teams
-ceasing any further sweeps/displacements

Local residents should reach out to their city councils, reject their false dichotomy of “displacement or status quo” and demand solutions that are grounded in human rights and evidence.

We can all be safe. We can all have a home.

We must advocate a better way forward—if you are uncomfortable with visible poverty then put your energy towards:

-pushing for more shelter spaces
-advocating for universal basic income, rental supplements, rental market controls, modular housing
-improving the material conditions for everyone

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can create safety for everyone in our communities.

Housing is a basic human right.

There are solutions that are “more humane, and healthier than addressing homelessness through the lens of criminal justice.”

www.timescolonist.com/opinion/comm...

Also lol at this faux-outrage. Good work to the medical health officer.

“I was a bit surprised that we did receive that letter and didn’t have an opportunity to have a dialogue with the chief medical health officer in advance of receiving it and in advance of it becoming an issue in the media,”

So you worsen conditions and escalate risk, pushing people into harder to reach locations, disconnecting them from community and health services.

That’s structural violence.

And people in power know this. They have deemed the harms acceptable.

The argument that the surge in drug poisonings following the decampment was caused solely by a bad batch of drugs is ludicrous and lazy.

Forced displacement exacerbates risk—in the context of a toxic unregulated drug supply, that means a bad batch of drugs has a higher probability of killing.

British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner (2023):

“Forced eviction is isolating and traumatizing for encampment residents and may exacerbate
gender-based violence and the risks from a toxic drug supply.“

bchumanrights.ca/wp-content/u...

“Relocation must not result in the continuation or exacerbation of homelessness,”

“International human rights law does not permit governments to destroy peoples’ homes,
even if those homes are made of improvised materials and established without legal
authority.”

“Any such removal from their homes or from the land which they occupy, without the provision of appropriate forms of legal protection, is defined as a
‘forced eviction’ and is considered a gross violation of human rights.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing published a National Protocol for Homeless Encampments in Canada.

“The Principles outlined in this
Protocol are based in international human rights law and the recognition that encampment
residents are rights holders and experts in their own lives.”

“Research from the BC Centre on Substance Use and elsewhere has consistently shown that evicting and displacing people creates more harms.“

Harms include:
-disengagement from care
-prolonging homelessness
-increased barriers to health and social services

www.bccsu.ca/blog/2023/04...

“Involuntary displacement is estimated to worsen overdose and hospitalizations, decrease initiations of medications for opioid use disorder, and contribute to deaths among people experiencing homelessness who inject drugs.”

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

‘Very scary’: Cowichan records as many as 80 drug overdoses in single night

“It happened just hours after Lewis Street was cleared of dozens of tents, and the unhoused living in them were dispersed to new encampments.”

cheknews.ca/very-scary-c...

Feb 5 2026

Medetomidine also detected in #Scotland with ⬆️ prevalence.

“More recently, a new xylazine-type drug called medetomidine has been detected in Scotland. It first appeared in the drug supply in late 2025 and detections have since increased.”

publichealthscotland.scot/publications...