Policing in the Shadow of Canada’s Homelessness and Toxic Drug Crises

By Carolyn Greene, PhD

Ontario police services are tasked with a growing array of responsibilities today, many of which officers likely never anticipated would be a major part of their job. The police’s role in responding to Canada’s homelessness and toxic drug crises and, more specifically, the proliferation of homeless encampments or “tent cities” has emerged as a major new challenge for today’s police professionals

Encampments are not new. In the 1970s and 1980s, tents lined Toronto’s Don Valley, people slept under tarps in Ottawa’s downtown in the 1990s, and individuals using cardboard boxes to shelter from Lake Superior’s punishing chill in Thunder Bay in the 2000s remind us that these issues are anything but new. Yet, something feels different today.

Homelessness’s visible manifestations are more pronounced than ever before. Known homelessness has risen by an estimated 204 per cent in northern Ontario and 46 per cent across the rest of the province between 2016 and 2024 – likely a vast underestimate given the difficulty in tracking homelessness (Donaldson et al., 2025). Between 2022 and 2024 alone, the province’s homelessness rate increased by 25 per cent (Lambie, 2025). When combined with the recent loss of thousands of people to opioid poisoning – many of whom die alone on our sidewalks, behind our schools and in our parks – this has had disastrous effects.

Despite many decades of calls about shifting “social disorder” responses from police to other, more appropriate actors (e.g., outreach workers, social workers, bylaw officers, etc.) – including calls from police services – the reality is that police officers remain a key player in this sphere. Whether police are called to deal with encampments outside of businesses or on private property, respond to noise and disturbance complaints against residents, dispatched to suspected overdoses or weapons calls, or asked to lead and/or assist municipal encampment abatement efforts, it is police officers who often bear the brunt of dealing with the dayto-day manifestations and challenges of unsheltered homelessness. This unravelling of social order and perceptions of community safety has fanned tensions between the uniformed and the unhoused.

CRIME AND HOMELESSNESS

In 2019, my team and I initiated a small study on the impacts of newly opened safe consumption sites for those spending time on the streets. What our most marginalized community members told us and what we saw on the streets seemed to contradict much of what others had written about. For example, we heard that many on the streets chose not to or could not (e.g., due to being banned) access critical services, including safe consumption sites and shelters. Individuals also reported surprisingly positive perceptions of and relationships with police officers, and we saw many kind and respectful encounters first-hand. We thus decided to expand our research across the country.

To date, Drs. Marta-Marika Urbanik, Katharina Maier and I have conducted 700+ interviews and spent 3,000+ hours “deep hanging out” with members of the street community (unhoused persons, those who use drugs, drug dealers, gang members, etc.) across 12 Canadian communities and seven provinces, including Ontario. This is the largest socio-criminological study of crime and homelessness in Canadian history. Notably, our research is street-based. Instead of relying on community organizations or “gatekeepers” to hand-pick those we can speak/spend time with, we meet people directly where they are. This means we spend considerable time “deep hanging out” where the most marginalized live and congregate: in our parks, under bridges, in alleyways, behind buildings, outside trap houses and in encampments of all sizes and configurations.

This approach bypasses potential conflicts of interest stemming from gatekeepers in reaching and engaging with those who do and do not access community services and allows us to engage in real-time observations of street happenings (e.g., street beefs, interactions with police, bylaw, private security) and to gauge whether what people tell us they do is consistent with what they actually do.

The responsibility for responding to homelessness and drug use in communities will continue to fall on the police for the foreseeable future. Our findings show that how police officers do this work can make all the difference. Below, we share some takeaways from the study.

[1] While relationships between police and marginalized communities have long been strained, our study demonstrates that these relationships are far more nuanced than we typically hear about. Our study shows vast differences in how unhoused persons view and engage with police officers across Canadian communities. In some cities (e.g., Thunder Bay, Edmonton), unhoused persons hold surprisingly positive views of and relationships with local police. This contrasts with other communities, where unhoused persons’ assessments of police were highly negative.

So, what is happening in these different communities? Why would one Canadian police service be seen more positively than another? We find that how officers engage with unhoused folks shapes their perceptions of police, and they are quick to compliment and affirm local police and individual officers when they feel officers are abiding by procedural justice principles. The fundamental element shaping such compliments? Officers seeing unhoused people as “human” and treating them fairly and respectfully.

[2] In communities where social disorder issues are predominantly offloaded to other law enforcement agents (e.g., peace officers, bylaw), unhoused persons tend to have greater respect for police, emphasizing that police officers are pursuing the “real criminals” instead of “wasting their time bothering the homeless.” While this positively reflects on police officers, we find that unhoused persons are more likely to respond negatively to these other agents in the community, affording them less respect than “real” police and are deterred less by their presence, given their comparatively limited authority.

In July 2024, the OACP issued an updated Drug Strategy Framework position paper to address urgent substance addiction issues impacting Ontario communities.

Together with accompanying resources, the framework is designed to empower Ontario police leaders to address the specific needs of their communities. The OACP’s approach balances the need for enforcement with the necessity for community safety, well-being and treatment. Significantly, we acknowledge the disruptive and chaotic behaviours that require enforcement but emphasize a broader, more comprehensive strategy.

Please visit www.oacp.ca to access the Drug Strategy Framework.

[3] In communities where local police officers sympathize with unhoused persons and engage in small but meaningful acts of kindness (e.g., dropping off bottled water to encampments on scorching hot days, giving out a cigarette or two, taking an agitated encampment resident for a coffee to cool off instead of arresting them), street community members speak highly of police and report being much more likely to cooperate with them.

[4] When police officers must take more enforcement-oriented actions, such as asking someone to move along or telling them to pack up their tents, unhoused persons appreciate officers who personalize the situation. For example, officers who say, “You know I don’t want to do this either and I know you’re in a tough spot, but this is my job, and I have to ask you to move along,” are often better perceived and responded to than those who appear to be supporting/enjoying these policing tasks that may seem pretty inconsequential for officers but are indeed impactful to community members.

[5] Despite common rhetoric, police officers can and have facilitated unhoused persons’ access to and use of harm reduction services, including safe consumption sites. This encouragement saves lives and reduces public drug use.

[6] Officers’ recognition of why unhoused persons may consider encampments safer and more desirable than local homeless shelters – which are often overrun with bedbugs, gang members, theft and violence – can set the tone for positive exchanges between police and unhoused persons.

We hope these findings provide insight and perhaps some reassurance at a time when police services are facing harsh criticism for their roles in responding to the consequences of Canada’s homelessness and toxic drug crises.

Dr. Carolyn Greene received her PhD in Criminology from the University of Toronto. She is an Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University on public safety and policing. She can be reached at cgreenw@wlu.ca

References

• Booth, R., Shariff, S., Carter, B., Hwang, S., Orkin, A., Forchuk, C. & Gomes, T. (2024). “Opioid-related overdose deaths among people experiencing homelessness, 2017 to 2021: A population-based analysis using coroner and health administrative data from Ontario, Canada” International Journal of Population Data Science, 9(5). doi: 10.23889/ ijpds.v9i5.2492.

• Lambie, B. (2025). AMO launches groundbreaking homelessness study: Ontario at a tipping point with 80,000 homeless. Retrieved from: https://www.amo.on.ca/policy/health-emergency-and-social-services/amo-launches-groundbreakinghomelessness-study-ontario#:~:text= Ontario%20is%20at%20a%20 tipping,we%20need%20to%20work%20 together.”

• Donaldson, J., Wang, D., Escamilla, C. & Turner, A. (2025). Municipalities under pressure: The human and financial cost of Ontario’s homelessness crisis. Help Seeker. Retrieved from https://www.helpseeker. org/reports/municipalities-under-pressurethe-human-and-financial-cost-of-ontarioshomelessness-crisis.

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