The City of Lethbridge says its encampment strategy has been successful, two years into its operation. (Photo: Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Progress made two years after launching encampment strategy in Lethbridge, City says

Jun 20, 2025 | 12:30 PM

The City of Lethbridge is celebrating the second anniversary of its encampment strategy.

They say, since launching the plan to respond to homeless encampments in 2023, quite a bit of progress has been made.

“This strategy was never about quick fixes,” says Andrew Malcolm, General Manager of Community Social Development. “It’s about meeting people where they are, building trust and addressing challenges in a thoughtful, coordinated way. These results show that with persistence, collaboration and compassion, we’re changing the trajectory.”

More than 2,200 encampment-related sites have been triaged during that time, with over 85,000 kilograms of debris removed.

The City says that this has led to a reduction in the demand for emergency services. While encampment reports more than doubled from 2023 to 2024, calls to police fell by 16 per cent and Fire and EMS calls dropped by 11 per cent.

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Outdoor fire incidents related to encampments declined by over 27 per cent.

The pace of growth in the homeless population has reportedly slowed. According to the City’s Point-in-Time Counts, the number of people in Lethbridge who are homeless increased by seven per cent each year between 2022 and 2024.

Between 2018 and 2022, however, those numbers increased by 19.5 per cent on average each year.

Since outreach services were brought in-house at city hall, there has been a 263 per cent increase in outreach intakes and a 318 per cent rise in referrals.

From August 2024 to April 2025, a total of 19 people exited homeless. In the same period the year prior, there were none.

There also appears to be a changing perception about encampments.

Utilizing data around media coverage and online public sentiment, the city says 70.7 per cent of residents held negative views towards encampments in 2022. One year later, that dropped to just 19.6 per cent.

You can see the full encampment strategy on the City of Lethbridge’s website.

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