Advocacy registry plan is dehumanizing and cruel
At the general issues committee (GIC) meeting on Wednesday, May 24, Coun. Matt Francis introduced a motion to direct staff to explore the creation of a registry of Hamiltonians willing to house somebody living on the streets. According to Francis, this motion was motivated by the “compassion of Hamiltonians,” and a desire to end the presence of encampments.
It passed 9-6.
There are many glaring problems with proposing a policy like this, not least of which is that it reduces people who have been dehoused to the status of stray pets, needing adoption by “compassionate” housed people.
Moreover, it doesn’t address any of the root causes of the housing crisis, ignoring the fact that people with disabilities, Indigenous people and racialized people are dehoused at a disproportionate rate. This policy would also disproportionately relegate people in these groups to roommate housing arrangements, depriving them of access to a space that is truly their own, thus placing individuals who are already at high risk in even more precarious situations. In this manner, the proposed policy is dehumanizing, discriminatory and downright cruel.
That said, there is, I think, something moral behind council’s vote to pass this motion: the idea that resources should be shared. At Thanksgiving dinner, everybody gets one helping of turkey before anyone gets seconds. We would never tolerate a sibling hoarding the whole meal to themselves, and if they tried it, the authorities in the room — our parents — would surely step in and put a stop to it.
I want to speak to this moral impulse, in council and in my fellow Hamiltonians. At this very moment, there is a group of Hamiltonians with more housing than they need. A group who hoard two, 10, 100 units all to themselves, and deal them out piecemeal for their own profit, while their neighbours live in tents. I am referring to some landlords. It is fundamentally undemocratic for a small number of individuals to control who does and does not deserve to live indoors.
I have witnessed a person, in February, with hands turned purple by frostbite, camping outside the door to the now-abandoned City Centre Mall. Not two feet away is warm air and access to bathrooms, all behind a locked door. This is not an accident. It is a political choice to decide that landlords have more right to hoard housing and available space than people have to access it.
City council has declared a state of emergency in response to the housing crisis. Under Ontario’s expropriation act, it is possible for municipalities to expropriate land in extreme circumstances. In the past, Ontario municipalities and the provincial government have expropriated land to fulfil various objectives. For instance, Windsor’s city council voted to expropriate land from private holders to protect endangered plant life, and the province has expropriated land for the purposes of building highways. Surely, if expropriation (with compensation) is warranted to secure ecosystems and build roads, it is warranted in the face of the emergency of hundreds of Hamiltonians left with no secure place to sleep.
As has been said before, the housing crisis intersects with many other crises in our society. But these crises have solutions. City staff have calculated that it would only cost $8.9 million to provide the wraparound supports needed for those 200 individuals who the city deems “high acuity” such as access to addiction treatment and mental health care. That’s three quarters of the increase to the HPS budget.
With just $5 million the city could house 100 people with acute mental health needs.
It’s time for council to, in the words of Coun. Maureen Wilson, “put its shoulder to the wheel” and begin to implement the solutions we know can work. We deserve a council that will stand up for us when a privileged few are taking more than their fair share, not a council that shirks its responsibility. This proposed housing registry does just that. It’s a distraction from the deeper issues at play, and a betrayal of council’s responsibility to confront the housing crisis.