Waterloo Region Community Legal Services

We’re so grateful to community members like Leah Connor, who continue to lead with compassion, empathy, and humanity in conversations around homelessness and encampments. Building a safer community means building one where everyone has the dignity of a safe and affordable place to live.

We are so grateful to the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the Federal Housing Advocate for their important joint statement marking a significant milestone that affirms the human rights of people experiencing homelessness.

Read their full statement here: https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/resources/newsroom/important-milestone-affirms-human-rights-people-experiencing-homelessness

What’s happening in these encampments cannot be called humane.

No one is speaking honestly enough about the reality of the lives being lived there.

It is NOT humane to live surrounded by a rat infestation.
It is NOT humane to walk through rat urine or sleep beside rat f***s.
It is NOT humane to remain in a place where multiple people have already died.
It is NOT humane for young girls to be trafficked in plain sight.
It is NOT humane to live every day in a state of fear, hypervigilance, and survival mode.
It is NOT humane to be trapped in addiction with no real pathway out.
It is NOT humane to endure violence, untreated mental illness, and the harsh Canadian climate with no protection.

Judges, lawyers, and activists may speak about compassion and empathy, but we cannot pretend that what is happening right now is humanitarian. IT IS NOT. Allowing people to remain in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves, our families, or our neighbours is not compassion. It is abandonment dressed up as empathy.

As a society, we need to be honest: this is not working. We need solutions that are grounded in dignity, safety, and real support, not in maintaining the status quo because it feels morally comfortable. If we truly care about human rights, then we must be willing to do something different, because what we are doing now is failing the very people we claim to protect.