Up to 200 people are sleeping on Winnipeg streets, according to a new report by the city.
This comes after hundreds of encampments were cleared out over the last few months.
“It’s good to see that we are able to clear out more encampments quicker and we’ve been able to house more people in the last year,” said Jamil Mahmood, the executive director of Main Street Project.
“But we are also recognizing that the way it looks in communities is quite different. There’s a lot more visible homelessness now.”
The City of Winnipeg says between 150 and 200 people were “rough sleeping” as of the end of July.
The report was done by Main Street Project, the non-profit contracted by the city.
Numbers show 245 people were staying in 72 known encampments at the end of July.
The city cleared 141 encampments after it adopted a policy that restricts people from camping within a certain distance from schools, bridges and roads.
“This is one of the things we did warn the city when they were bringing this policy and protocol was that more people will be displaced and spread out around the city and that is what we are seeing,” Mahmood said.
Main Street Project building on Winnipeg’s Main Street, Sept. 3, 2026. (Sofia Frolova, CityNews)
He says it’s making outreach work even more challenging.
“We do need a lot more outreach in our city,” he said. “We are pretty bare bones in terms of what we have available, so it is stretching an already stretched support even thinner.”
On the other side of the river, outreach groups are seeing a different picture.
Marion Willis, the founder of St. Boniface Street Links, argues the numbers are a lot higher.
“I don’t think those are the numbers quite frankly,” Willis said. “I think that there are not really less homeless encampments, not less homeless people and people rough sleeping on the streets and other places.”
Groups agree there is a dire need for transitional housing, as Willis continues to call for a supervised encampment to open in Winnipeg.
“With every encampment you dismantle, there are three more that set up. That’s the reality here. With every three people you house, there are five more spiralling into homelessness because we are not addressing the root cause.”
The standing policy committee on community services will meet Sept. 8 to discuss the report.
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