‘Wet house’ shouldn’t close, protesters say
He was broke and homeless, so 10 years ago Peter Leslie turned to the red brick building on George St. called School House.
The men’s shelter aims to keep people off the street while they search for permanent housing. It’s also a “wet house,” meaning residents are permitted to drink beer in a supervised setting, a tactic called harm reduction, similar to philosophy behind safe-injection sites.
School House helped Leslie get back on his feet, and he now aids people struggling with addiction. But the facility’s ability to help others was thrown in jeopardy in 2009, after its operator, Dixon House, announced it would no longer run the shelter.
Lacking an operator, the 55-bed shelter — funded by the City of Toronto and not-for-profits organizations — has stopped taking new residents, and is slated to close once the 35 men now living there find housing.
The looming closure prompted Leslie and a few dozen others to protest outside the shelter Wednes- day night, calling on City Hall to find an alternative way to keep the shelter open.
“We view this as an erosion of harm reduction, and I think it’s political, frankly,” said Leslie, a member of the newly formed Harm Reduction Coalition of Toronto.
“If Dixon Hall doesn’t want to be the vendor anymore, then the city still has an obligation to keep this service open,” said Zoe Dobb, another coalition member.
As School House residents peered down from windows, protesters held signs calling on the city to “Save the School House” and citizens to “Stop Rob Ford and fight the cuts.”
But Kristyn Wong-tam, councilor in the School House ward, told the Star the closure is not a direct impact of city budget cuts, but an indication from Dixon Hall that the shelter “no longer met their strategic direction.”
She added the city never considered School House a designated harm reduction centre, such as the Annex Harm Reduction Program or Eva’s Satellite, a homeless youth shelter. Wong-tam said the shelter would not close until current residents were placed in permanent housing. Protesters said that doesn’t help men who will need shelter in the future. “What is happening is truly an outrage,” said John Clarke, a member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. “There is still a need for this facility, and there should be more like it.”