What's Happening to Homeless Health

Every year ECOHH hosts a Homeless Memorial service to honour the lives lost or shortened due to lack of permanent housing. This year's is on June 4, and you can find out more here.

We know that the encampment clearing efforts of the City of Edmonton and Edmonton Police Services have driven hundreds of homeless Edmontonians away from the downtown core, and sometimes deprived them of shelter during the coldest periods of the year. ECOHH has shared information in numerous blogs about the dangers of living rough:

From the past month - Police crackdowns make homelessness worse and Edmonton’s homelessness crisis is political violence

From 2024 - Dangers for people living rough greater than ever

From 2022 - Crisis for unhoused people more serious than official messages suggest

While the danger of living homeless has been evident for years, new evidence is emerging about the impact of encampment sweeps and 'moving along' homeless people from the places they congregate for safety and community. Emergency visits by people with no fixed address have increased over the past 5 years in Edmonton and surrounding areas.

In addition, the impacts of current policies are evident in the number of homeless people diagnosed with frostbite and suffering amputations as a result.

According to the City of Edmonton, from January 2020 to April 2026, there were 340 days of extreme weather, two-thirds of which were days of extreme cold ( -20°C with wind chill for three consecutive days). Cold winter temperatures are harmful to unhoused populations: exposure to extreme cold can result in frostbite injuries and death due to hypothermia. These injuries and fatalities are occurring in Edmonton. According to reporting by CBC journalist Taylor Lambert, Edmonton had 113 amputations performed with a diagnosis of frostbite last winter — more than five times the number recorded in fiscal 2019 — and more than half of those procedures were performed on patients recorded as experiencing homelessness. In their review of patient records, University of Alberta and Alberta Health Services researchers found that 35% of the frostbite cases among Edmonton's unhoused population in 2024 occurred outside of the City of Edmonton's extreme weather response.

Evidence, in the form of statistics and facts, present an overarching picture of the disaster on our streets. First-hand experience presents another. Quinn Strikwerda, Pastor of Sanctuary of Peace and Co-Chair of ECOHH says, "I work with people at Sanctuary of Peace every day who don't have permanent housing, and I see the damage it does to their health. Every time you deny housing to someone because of a disability, or mental illness, or just plain poverty, you are taking days, or months, or years off their life."

While we gather to mourn the lives of Edmontontians shortened by a lack of permanent affordable housing, we also challenge the people in power at the municipal, provincial, and federal level to do better. This memorial was held first in 2005. When can we stop?