How to make a Crisis Worse

Winnipeg is showing us how to take a community crisis and make it worse. Want know how to take a homelessness crisis, coupled with drug crisis, and make sure that it spreads out and becomes a community crisis? Well, Winnipeg can show you the way!

Forgive my facetiousness, but we are very much a community in crisis. Today, the Free Press featured a story about my street, my block, my neighbours. And if anything this story understates the extent of the crisis, and the lack of response from all orders of government.

This is not the first story about this crisis. I have written about it before, back on May 31st. I described a little bit of what has been happening in my neighbourhood since the spring. In the almost two months since, it has only got worse.

And it’s not only my neighbourhood of West Broadway, it is in other communities as well.

These more recent stories are on top of the stories from April and May raising the alarm about the impacts of provincial and municipal government initiatives for addressing crisis in our unhoused community. Specifically the “Your Way Home” initiative by the Province of Manitoba and the encampment removals started by the City of Winnipeg.

Dan Lett recently wrote a particularly trenchant piece about the crisis, and the lack of effectiveness in the response from all orders of government:

Dan is write, there has been far too much finger pointing and not enough action. The response from the Mayor’s Office to one of my neighbours is clearly indicative of that: Call your MLA they said. And yes, that is indeed “shirking” your responsibilities.

The disconnect between our elected leaders and the community is palpable. In our neighbourhood hundreds of people can be seen wandering the streets at all hours. Residents regularly check on unconscious people and administer naloxone to those who are unresponsive. One day, paramedics merely parked in the middle of the street and walked up and down the block and back alley administering naloxone to the many people that needed resuscitation.

Lest you think that I and my neighbours are exaggerating, below is a photo of naloxone being administered to someone who overdosed on my doorstep.

This is what it means to turn residents into front line workers. This is the direct result of the policies of both the provincial and municipal governments.

Your Way Home has prioritized placing people from encampments directly into housing. In principle this is a solid approach under a Housing First direction. The breakdown happens when it is housing only. The success of a Housing First approach relies not on the housing but on the wrap around supports that people need. You can’t simply place people who have been chronically unhoused, are high acuity, and suffering from multiple issues into an apartment and expect them to succeed, let alone thrive. The approach taken, without the requisite supports in place, is a recipe for failure, for the unhoused person and for the community. Winnipeg is clearly experiencing this.

In November 2025, the City of Winnipeg instituted a policy of encampment removal from many areas in the city. As previously explored, this ended up making encampments, and thereby homelessness, illegal in a majority of the city. This continues a decades long approach by the City of Winnipeg to simply move the problem along rather than committing to real lasting solutions.

People have to go somewhere. If you move them out of encampments they will end up in our communities. The City was warned this would happen, and it is exactly what we are seeing in neighbourhoods across Winnipeg. In May and June, when community concerns were being expressed with the impacts of the encampment policy, the City responded with the simple and simplistic 10-day police crackdown on open drug use. Again, accomplishing little as those front line agencies said it would.

In our neighbourhood, and countless others, the problems and challenges are only getting worse. When residents of Osborne Village expressed concerns about open drug use and concerns around safety, the response from City Hall demonstrated the deep lack of understanding or caring about the impacts of their policy decisions.

On July 20th, in response to the concerns expressed by community members, Mayor Gillingham responded with:

“It’s one of the reasons why we have our encampment protocol, and one of the reasons why … we’re expanding the needle cleanup in parks and playgrounds in those areas,” the mayor said. “Parents shouldn’t have to be concerned about their kids’ safety and well-being when their kids are going to daycare.” - July 20, 2026 Winnipeg Free Press

Between the finger pointing at the provincial government and the complete disregard of the impact of their policies, this response simply continues the pattern of neglect and “shirking” of responsibility. The reason that parents in the community are concerned about their safety is the result of the encampment protocol!

Dan Lett rightly calls out our elected leaders for their inaction. The response we have seen from the province is half-hearted and knowingly leads to failure, whereas the City is continuing it’s long-standing policy of moving it along, “Nothing to see here”. Winnipeg is simply continuing it long history of displacement.

Time’s up

Time is up. The simplistic approach of either blaming the other guy or heavy handed enforcement is not addressing the challenges. Experts in the field, the service providers and hands-on workers, are being ignored. Their advice is being ignored and when government policy fails, those very same agencies get either the blame or the burden of having to pick up the pieces.

Communities are suffering. Residents are forced into being front-line workers, communities are being split, neighbours are not venturing out in their neighbourhoods, and some are calling it quits and simply moving. On top of doing nothing to address what is admittedly a very difficult situation, government policy is making it worse for others.

Winnipeg is in crisis. So far, the response to that crisis has made the problem worse for more people. Residents know we are in crisis, it is literally on our doorstep. So far, the only people who don’t recognize the crisis are the decision makers fiddling away.

Our leaders need a better role model than Nero.

brian

ps. This post is brimming with frustration. I am galled by the dismissiveness and “shirking” of responsibility from our leaders.

It would be very easy for my neighbours to say, as municipal leaders are, “it’s not our problem”, but they don’t, Despite the frustration, the response from my neighbours has shown compassion and care for others. They see the value in everyone, no matter their lot in life. They see how broken people are and they respond with kindness and patience. There are over 15 kids under the age of 10 on our block, and my neighbours are being an incredible role model for them.