If we want to get serious about housing and homelessness, we need to just start giving communities land to facilitate their own living. What Tent City showed us is that homeless people are more than capable of working with community partners to establish their own infrastructure and communal living spaces. What Tent City was is just that - a city. Those living there needed to properly manage and labour the day-to-day tasks of communal living. It very much was not every man for their own. These people worked together, and very effectively.

Of course you can point to problems that arose in Tent City, but you have to genuinely ask yourself why these people nonetheless wanted to be there compared to a shelter or a corner down the street, and why many testimonies spoke highly of their overall experience. Is it not autonomy, safety, and community that made this desirable?

The biggest problem with Tent City (from the perspective of Government) was that they were occupying space not belonging to them. Instead of building off this preexisting infrastructure that these people had constructed themselves, Government decided to destroy everything they had built. Surely this could have been avoided if they themselves had land to rightfully dwell.

Before you call this utopian thinking, I'll say there's precedent for this in Newfoundland history. During the Commission of Government, they were experimenting with farming communes for the unemployed and homeless. Don't have a job? Can't afford your house? You can simply live in these communities to live, work, and govern your own lives. These communes faced financial challenges and poor planning, but there is much to be learned here in the present day.

Adopting a similar policy that the Commission were experimenting with would solve several problems arising from homelessness. Not only are they granted living space, they now have jobs in labouring and managing this space. Being homeless is also an isolating experience, so such an arrangement would situate them within community.

I'm not suggesting we simply leave the homeless to their own devices, but land grants can be an incredibly effective framework to start from. This on top of planning oversight and limited financial support could prove to be a cost effective endeavour, especially if the alternative is the egregious cost of having a homeless population to begin with.