How many more homeless need to die before we act?
On Tuesday, Toronto city council called homelessness a “critical and emergency issue”; one week after the homeless memorial recorded its 995th name. When this piece is published, more names will have been added.
Toronto Public Health estimates that two people die homeless each week. They also report that the median age of those who die homeless is 49. This crisis, decades in the making, has reached a point where witnessing severe deprivation is a quotidian fact of city life.
While council’s phrasing is a welcome shift, we still need public pressure to make them act. Declaring homelessness a “state of emergency” would give the mayor unilateral power to re-direct funding and immediate resources to prevent further death and suffering.
As the number of people struggling without shelter grows, we face increasingly uncomfortable questions about our responsibilities to one another. For many, the faces of the homeless suggest depths of despair we would rather not imagine, let alone encounter — better to avert our gaze and hurry on with our day-to-day tasks.
Many homeless people I know have expressed feeling like they’re “invisible” to others. One man experiencing homelessness in Toronto, Paul, explains: “You have no hopes and dreams anymore, people think you’re nothing and you end up thinking you’re nothing.”
Tragically, he’s not wrong. Inequality is corrosive to our social fabric; it undermines our ability to recognize the value of another person. But inequality and our indifference to it isn’t a fixture of human nature. High levels of inequality erode social solidarity and the sense that we’re all in the same boat, while greater equality fosters empathy.
Someone’s survival should not hinge on charity. Guaranteeing access to basic material resources, like shelter, enables everyone to participate in social and political life, making our cities more vibrant and democratic.
As Toronto rents skyrocket, winning the legal right to housing was a positive, albeit symbolic step. But more urgently, we must rally to support those who are at risk of dying premature, avertable deaths.
Recently, housing advocate Cathey Crowe laid out many of the concrete actions that an emergency declaration could set in motion: identifying vacant city buildings for immediate shelter use; distributing survival equipment (sleeping bags, safe heat sources, tents); additional outreach support teams; and a moratorium on the eviction of people living outdoors and in encampments. With shelters full, where can people go?
Finding funds and resources to address this emergency is both a question of political will and moral clarity. Council’s political inaction raises concerning moral questions about what, or who, we value and why. How many more people need to die before we act?