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Open Access

Opinion

Green sweeps: Ecological rationalities and homeless encampment pollution

  • Timothy G. Wykes ,

    Roles Conceptualization, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

    twykes@wlu.ca

    Affiliation Department of Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, Ontario, Canada

    ⨯
  • Annie Simpson

    Roles Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

    Affiliation Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada

    ⨯

Citation: Wykes TG, Simpson A (2025) Green sweeps: Ecological rationalities and homeless encampment pollution. PLOS Sustain Transform 4(3): e0000166. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000166

Editor: Alka Bharat, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, INDIA

Published: March 28, 2025

Copyright: © 2025 Wykes. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Recent single-day counts have identified more than 40,000 people experiencing homelessness in Canada, with the number of those unsheltered increasing by 88% since 2018 [1]. The unsheltered homeless, or “rough sleepers”, includes individuals and groups sleeping outside in public or semi-public spaces. While Canada recognized “mass homelessness” as a “social problem” during the latter half of the 1980s, homelessness has continued to increase in both scope and visibility since the 1990s [2]. Mass homelessness increased as neoliberal policies reduced federal and provincial investments in affordable housing and social and health supports. Further, remedial emergency resources, including shelters and day programs, were not equipped to address the etiology of homelessness, nor did most provide the long-term supports necessary to effect permanent transitions from homelessness. These provisional measures only partially attend to the hardships faced by homeless individuals with disabilities, psychiatric ailments, addictions, or trauma. Moreover, many shelters operate at or near capacity and potential residents face numerous bureaucratic barriers to admission [3]. Recently, amid Canada’s rapidly changing demographics and climbing unaffordability, the absence of comprehensive supports for refugee claimants has resulted in a sharp increase in East African-origin newcomers among those in the streets and emergency shelters [4].

These and other dimensions of the housing crisis have corresponded with a surge in homeless encampments in Canadian cities [5]. While varying in size, organization, and structure, homeless encampments refer to “any area wherein an individual or a group of people live in homelessness together, often in tents or other temporary structures” [6]. Encampments are often established in or near infrastructure such as abandoned buildings, overpasses, and sidewalks. Here, our focus is directed towards encampments settled in public green spaces, which include trail systems, parks, and riverbanks. Green spaces allow the unsheltered homeless to avoid criminalization from neo-vagrancy laws [7] and find “privacy, survival, and solace” outside [8].

At a time when individuals and institutions are urged to “think globally, act locally” to address anthropogenic impacts on the environment, the presence of encampments in public green spaces can upset residents’ ideals relating to humans’ relationship with nature. This dilemma unfolds at the local level when municipalities file injunctions to evict encampments by deploying what Sarah Dooling calls ecological rationalities, the combination of efforts to revive and restore green space with the ethic of minimizing or removing the negative impacts of humans on biophysical processes [9]. Ecological rationalities place sweeps above dispute by framing the removal of unsheltered homeless and their belongings as necessary for protecting the environment and public health.

As Dooling writes, ecological rationalities are contradictory when the promise of environmental renewal accompanies the displacement and eviction of vulnerable populations. Writing in recognition of the interconnection between social and environmental justice [10], this commentary is informed by our own research with the homeless in Ontario, Canada and draws from the now-matured body of literature evidencing the counterproductive and harmful tendencies of encampment sweeps. We conclude by advocating for ecologically and socially sustainable housing solutions rooted in participatory and knowledge co-design traditions.

Sorting through the ecological rationalities of green sweeps

Opposition to the presence of “unsightly squats” [11] in public green spaces relates to broader discussions within the environmental justice literature regarding the promise of urban greening as a “public good for all” [12]. Sweeps usually begin with a report of an encampment to city services, followed by site visits involving coordinated outreach and intervention, and end with eviction and clean-up. Clean-up advocates, often nearby residents and business groups, position sweeps as a strategy to protect the environment and save “homeless people from themselves” [13], with garbage (especially syringes), water contamination, fire hazards, and habitat harm cited as paramount concerns. Notably, studies on the ecological impacts from encampments have lacked conclusive data [e.g., 14], and impacts vary by factors including the type of pollution captured, climate, and what mitigation strategies, if any, are employed [15–17].

To any extent homeless encampments negatively impact the environment and public health, housed residents in Canada have reported avoiding and losing enjoyment in visiting public green spaces due to their presence [e.g., 18]. While the anger and disgust directed towards “unsanitary conditions” in encampments may conceal a desire to evict homeless communities [19], from a ‘just sustainabilities’ perspective [20,21], encampments can compromise the equitable sharing and use of public green spaces. In Canada, women, immigrants, students, part-time workers, people with shared homes, those without garden access, and individuals with low mental health tend to report more passive use of urban green spaces [22]. Disadvantaged groups may gain more health benefits from green spaces than their more advantaged counterparts [23]. Accordingly, while homeless encampments reflect the eschewing of our collective responsibility as a prosperous nation to guarantee adequate shelter, the pressing need to address their growth is underscored by wider and immediate implications for community health equity, quality of life, and access to shared public amenities.

Encampment occupants as environmental caretakers

The unsavory narratives and assumptions that promote green sweeps obscure from view more complex realities of the relationship between the occupants and the surrounding natural environment. As spaces inhabited by people, pollution is an expected outcome of basic reproductive practices and adaptations to the exigencies of unsheltered life. Importantly, the unsheltered homeless enjoy rejuvenating and peaceful aspects of nature and in many ways use parks “like anyone else” [24], with research demonstrating their capacities to uphold environmental stewardship, dignified living standards, and hygiene [25]. Occupants prefer to use private sanitation facilities and have gone to extreme lengths to avoid public exposure. Current and former homeless residents find pride and pleasure in informal recycling, or “binning” [26,27]. Moreover, many organized encampments rotate cleaning duties [28] and, even with high rates of hypothermic injury and death, adhere to informal codes of conduct that limit the use of fires [19].

Despite occupants’ precautions, infrastructural inequality exacerbates the pollutive and public health harms associated with encampments [25; see also 29]. Brownfields, for example, have exposed occupants to “legacy pollution” [19] from industrial contaminants, endangering their health. Furthermore, although waste has been reduced by servicing regular garbage pick-up and providing canisters to dispose of used needles, encampments typically lack regular waste management and removal services. Municipalities also often fail to install and maintain accessible public restrooms citing fears they will be damaged, used for drug consumption, and/or attract homeless individuals to the area. Ironically, these actions jeopardize public health by placing the homeless at high risk of illness and infection through their subsequent exposure to contaminated waterbodies and unsanitary sites [e.g., 30,31].

Homeless encampment sweeps and social harm

Encampment sweeps add to the burdens already borne by the occupants. Sweeps are (re)traumatizing and have been linked to increased stress and substance use, lack of sleep, and deteriorated physical health [e.g., 32,33]. Sweeps also disrupt relationships with outreach workers and interrupt steps in building housing-readiness. Additionally, clean-up crews have indiscriminately discarded essential items and have treated unattended campsites as abandoned, leaving occupants to discover all of their belongings gone upon return [34,35]. Occupants consequently feel unable to request formal assistance with addressing encampment pollution due to their fear of workers confiscating or destroying their possessions. Relatedly, the loss or confiscation of medications for opioid use disorder and overdose reversal, safer use supplies, as well as the reduction in mutual surveillance through sweep-induced dispersal, have been linked to increases in fatal overdoses after sweeps [e.g., 33,36]. Finally, and crucially, sweeps often fail to successfully transfer occupants to shelters, and displace them to less-safe and/or further isolated living situations. Accordingly, sweeps perpetuate the ongoing cycle of eviction and displacement.

Un-earthing homelessness

Our ideas about and approaches to pollution can maintain and disrupt (un)just social systems [29]. Prevailing responses to encampment pollution demonstrate the “mutual benefits” of a coalition between social and environmental concerns have not yet been fully realized [20]. At present, while encampments are unsuitable as permanent housing solutions, international human rights law prohibits governments from destroying people’s homes, even if constructed from improvised materials and without legal authority. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has ruled that clearing encampments without providing adequate shelter space, even when unsanitary conditions are present, violates s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Encampment pollution, like homelessness, should be addressed through “solutions driven” responses rather than stop-gap measures to manage the crisis [37]. Central to this approach is a rich research base that seeks to prevent the onset of homelessness and to facilitate exit, thereby addressing both incidence and prevalence. The Framework for Preventing Homelessness rightfully notes that an effective affordable housing strategy is a prerequisite for any strategic initiative to prevent and end homelessness [38]. To this end, the creation and maintenance of non-market housing and allied decommodification efforts offer suitable principles to guide policies aiming to end homelessness.

To encourage successful transitions to housing, stakeholders must shift from criminalizing or obstructing encampments to having meaningful discussions with and participation from occupants in the design and implementation of policies, programs, and practices. Outreach programs that are culturally-relevant [e.g., 39] and recognize the dignity of homeless people are essential. It is also necessary to challenge the defeatist narrative of the homeless as “service resistant” [40], as this stance overlooks how their readiness to leave the streets, past experiences with services, ability to adapt to shelters, and knowledge of available supports shape their housing decisions [e.g., 41].

The ‘knowledge equity’ approach [42] encourages groups impacted by social and environmental injustices to have an equal voice in knowledge co-creation. Given that the homeless have expressed a desire to participate in developing solutions to mitigate their environmental vulnerabilities [43], current and former homeless residents should co-design relevant interventions.

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