Carpenter’s tiny shelters a missed opportunity for city

Khaleel Seivwright saw a problem and acted quickly. For that, he’s a hero.

Seivwright is the Toronto carpenter who started building tiny shelters in the fall as the cold was setting in and hundreds were living outdoors. The city sent him a letter asking him to stop in November and on Feb. 12, issued a legal injunction.

The crux here is safety. City and fire officials say the shelters are a burn risk. A recent fire in a Corktown encampment resulted in one death, though not yet connected to a tiny shelter.

On the other side is an inadequate shelter system and COVID-19 outbreaks within them. Weighing the relative risks, many are choosing to live outdoors during the pandemic. Both are not ideal situations.

The encampments in parks and ravines across Toronto and other Canadian cities have been one of the most visible consequences of the pandemic.

This is not the first time Toronto’s parkland has been a place to find insecure housing in a time of crisis.

In “Reclaiming the Don: An Environmental History of Toronto’s Don River Valley,” author Jennifer Bonnell has a chapter looking at the long history of people living in ravines, especially during the Great Depression.

She documents the “Hobo Jungle” of 1930 and 1931 located on the flats north of the Prince Edward Viaduct.

“Sometime in the fall of 1930 a group of men found refuge in a brick factory in the valley, and rumours began to circulate about the Don Valley ‘kilndwellers,’” writes Bonnell.

She found descriptions of 42 men living there, some who would sleep on recently baked bricks that often took up to a week to cool.

“Jungle inhabitants defended their choice of the valley as one that allowed them to maintain their dignity and independence,” she writes, echoing a sentiment often expressed by people who choose Toronto’s streets over its shelters today.

“If pride was one reason these men chose the valley, the shrinking availability of other forms of relief was another.”

By the summer of 1931, Bonnell notes, the Toronto Star reported around 400 men camped along the Don River.

Unlike the early years of the Depression, where Bonnell describes the closure of all but one of the city’s missions and shelters, Toronto is actually expanding some affordable housing opportunities today.

Two modular housing projects were fast tracked on Macey Avenue and Dovercourt Road, and more buildings are in the works, like the longplanned affordable housing on Queens Wharf Road near Fort York.

All of this takes time though, while housing needs during this pandemic have been acute and immediate.

As Seivwright expressed in a recent video response to the injunction, he sees his tiny shelters as a temporary solution to the housing crisis, to “keep people alive until they can access alternative housing.” He wishes the city could work with him, instead of forcing him to stop at a time when shelters are often at capacity.

Surely there’s a way to address safety concerns.

I’m struck by where the city decides to use its legal weight, and where it doesn’t. Risk is always weighed.

Throughout the summer and fall, all manner of precariousseeming makeshift structures appeared on the CurbTO patios, themselves in precarious locations near traffic, often wooden and warmed by gas heaters. To be clear, that city initiative was a good one, proving quick, provisional solutions are possible.

I also think of how dangerous it is on city streets for pedestrians, cyclists and even drivers, something that has taken years of activism to get Toronto to improve, even at an excruciatingly slow pace. In 2019, a 17year-old boy was killed at a Scarborough intersection where community members had begged the city to install a traffic light for five years to no avail.

Imagine if Torontonians could just issue an injunction when they felt unsafe.

Does the existence of tiny shelters too-glaringly demonstrate an inadequate system? Would supporting Seivwright’s shelters be a tacit approval of living in parks, something many Torontonians themselves have accepted as a sad reality in bad times, but the city officially can’t abide?

Here’s another missed opportunity: the Toronto design, architecture, developer, real estate and builder communities could step up and help Seivwright.

There’s an incredible amount of talent and know-how — including safe building practices and materials — along with lots money.

Billions are made in this city in this combined industry and the pandemic didn’t slow it down much.

Toronto is a city of endless excitement around design-y things that can be done with shipping containers or laneway houses, the latter being fine and good but boutique, expensive projects.

The architecture and planning community itself stepped up this week with speculative proposals to save the Dominion Foundry.

There’s still time for them to help Seivwright. Surely Toronto won’t issue its own establishment an injunction.