Home
Books
The Bylaw State

The Bylaw State

Encampment Evictions and the Struggle for Public Space

by Alexandra Flynn and Joe Hermer foreword by Terry Teegee

Cities weaponize bylaws to manage, regulate, and police the mobility and conditions of unhoused people living in encampments amid a massive housing crisis.

Request Exam Copy

About the book

Encampments occupied by unhoused and precariously sheltered people have proliferated in recent years in cities and towns across Canada. While right-to-housing legislation and other rights protections exist on paper, their minimal legal force has left municipalities mostly free to use policing and bylaw enforcement to remove encampments from public spaces. The result is unnoticed but devastating violence against highly vulnerable people who have no choice but to survive in public spaces.

Anti-encampment bylaws raise the question of what legal and moral rights unhoused people have to live in public space. The Bylaw State shows that bylaws are powerful municipal instruments. Far from being innocuous laws enforced by municipal workers, bylaws have quietly emerged over the last two decades as the method of governing homelessness in Canada. Case studies in Prince George and Vancouver demonstrate the extraordinary expansion of municipal bylaws and the place of courts in defending the legal rights of homeless people to take up public space. Legal scholar Alexandra Flynn and sociologist Joe Hermer explain how municipalities create an exclusionary ideal of public space through evictions and banishment, and they make a powerful case for a more inclusive approach that protects people not just spaces.

Class Inequality Crime & Law Public Policy Urban Studies

Authors

Alexandra Flynn

Alexandra Flynn is an associate professor at UBC’s Allard School of Law and the director of the Housing Research Collaborative, where her teaching and research focus on municipal and property law. The Housing Research Collaborative comprises CMHC- and SSHRC-funded projects focused on Canada’s housing crisis: the Housing Assessment Resource Tools project, which helps communities to measure and address their housing need, and the Balanced Supply of Housing Node, which brings together academic and non-profit community partners to research responsive land use practices and the financialization of housing. She is the recipient of the 2024 Gold Roof Award for Housing Research Excellence.

She is working on several projects related to housing law in Canadian cities, including legal protections for those living in tent encampments and the right to housing. Prior to entering academia, she practised corporate law in New York, where she was the recipient of several Legal Aid awards. She also practised Aboriginal law in Vancouver, representing First Nations, and worked in a senior policy role at the City of Toronto focused on intergovernmental relationships.

Flynn is a past TEDx speaker, a frequent media commentator, and a keynote speaker. She has a long history of volunteer work.

Joe Hermer

Joe Hermer is a criminologist and an associate professor in and chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He does research in the areas of policing, regulation, and state power, with a particular interest in vulnerable and street-involved populations. His recent work has focused on how municipal governments police homeless encampments and unhoused people in public space. He advises NGOs, charities, and legal advocates on anti-criminalization strategies and legal interventions. His recent work includes Policing Compassion: Begging, Law and Power in Public Spaces.

Terry Teegee

Terry Teegee is the elected Regional Chief of the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations and proudly serving his third term in this position. Terry’s ancestry is Dakelh, Gitxsan and Sekani descent and he is a member of Takla Nation. As a former registered professional forester, Terry was responsible for looking after the forests, forest lands and forest resources. Terry is deeply involved in natural resources development and the pertaining policies. As Regional Chief, he was an instrumental voice in the development and historic passing of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA).