Rush to Judgment: A Critical Survey of Court Injunctions Against Homeless Encampments in BC, 2000-2022

Homeless encampments on public land are a pervasive symptom of the housing crisis in British Columbia. They often end when the government owner of the encampment site gets a court order to evict them, dispersing many occupants to the streets, parks or new encampments. This report provides the first comprehensive survey of how BC courts respond when government actors ask them for injunctions to remove or regulate homeless encampments on publicly-owned land. It reveals that applications for interlocutory injunctions against homeless encampments in BC have an astounding 85% success rate; applications for final injunctions have a much lower success rate of 25%, suggesting that courts are more likely to favour of homeless encampment residents when the issues and evidence are developed and explored fully; some decisions apply a relaxed legal test that focuses on trespass and statutory violations while ignoring issues of harm and balance of convenience; no decisions apply the “strong prima facie case” standard that should apply in such cases; and interlocutory decisions routinely resolve complex, contested factual and legal issues prematurely, on the basis of affidavit evidence alone. On the other hand, recent decisions suggest that the tide may be shifting toward an approach that comes closer to doing justice to the vital interests at stake in these cases.