Staff from the Municipal District of St. Stephen (MDSS) have asked the council not to proceed with creating a vagrancy bylaw for the community, according to a report filed by the town’s chief administrative officer.
“If council wishes to address identified public-space concerns, administration should instead be directed to assess specific behaviours, existing legal authorities, service gaps and enforcement capacity and return with narrowly tailored options developed with legal, policing, bylaw enforcement and community service patterns,” the report said.
According to the Homeless Hub, vagrancy bylaws were designed to target anyone whose simple presence was perceived as a threat to the prevailing social and economic order.
At least 75 per cent of Canadians, according to the Homeless Hub, live in jurisdictions with vagrancy-style laws.
The town has been grappling with a homelessness crisis for several years, with more than 100 individuals considered unhoused.
Neighbourhood Works Inc. has operated a shelter at 9 Main Street that has been the focal point for community concern. It is a 30-bed shelter funded through the provincial government.
A previous council rejected a proposal for transitional housing to be built prior to the general election in May.
Renaud’s report said the Local Governance Act does give broad authority to regulate public spaces, nuisances and matters affecting safety, health and welfare.
“That authority may support carefully drafted rules governing specific conduct,” he said in the report. “It does not make a broad, status-based ‘vagrancy’ bylaw advisable.”
The report said the term vagrancy is dated and imprecise.
“It tends to associate enforcement with poverty, homelessness, unemployment, appearance or presence in public rather than with objectively harmful behaviour,” he said in the report. “Such an approach creates substantial risk of vagueness, overbreadth, arbitrary or unequal enforcement, Charter challenges, human-rights complaints, duplication of Criminal Code provision and damage to public trust.”
Renaud also pointed to issues with enforcement capacity. He said it would require trained and available personnel, after-hours coverage and reliable evidence and records, among other things.
“Without those components, adoption would likely produce uneven enforcement and public expectations that the municipality cannot meet,” he said in the report.
The report said the question is not whether council wishes for public spaces to be safe and accessible, but whether a broad vagrancy prohibition would be lawful and effective.
“In the administration’s view, it would not,” he said in the report.
The council is expected to review three options at the Sept. 2 council meeting, including not proceeding with the vagrancy bylaw, directing a conduct-based public space review or directing immediate preparation of a vagrancy bylaw.
Staff are recommending the conduct-based public space review.
“If [the] council directs further review, communications should clearly state that the municipality is examining safety, accessibility and use of public spaces — not criminalizing homelessness or poverty,” the report said.
1 Comment
I definitely agree with Jeff on this one. Let’s not trot out failed 1950s style ‘solutions’ to a problem that already has one: namely transitional housing. The province has stated multiple times that the only thing keeping the money and services out of St. Stephen is a lack of a location to put the transitional housing development. The council should be focused on providing that to resolve this issue. If you want people not to be in public, the best way to do that is to give them a private place to be.