Stop dismantling the homeless encampments
The bylaw is clear on homeless encampments in Toronto: Illegal.
Which has not prevented the mushrooming of tent clusters across the city, particularly since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic 10 months ago. Sixty-nine camps, 423 tents, plus 18 known locations in transportation rightof-ways — beneath overpasses, tracts of land where the public has rights to cross, and the like.
That’s according to new interim figures on Shelter Access Data Indicators and Trends, presented Monday to the city’s economic, community and development committee, with dozens of deputants stacked up to speak at the virtual city hall meeting. More specifically, to demand a moratorium on encampment evictions.
An encampment is defined as one or more tents, tarps or other temporary structures.
Here’s another stat, provided to the Star by the Toronto Fire Department: Thus far in 2020, they’ve responded to 226 encampment fires, a 228 per cent increase over the same period last year. And that doesn’t include fires where no call for assistance was made, no fire truck dispatched.
Fires caused by generators, flammable tents, wood pilings, foam insulation pods, heaters, all the bits and pieces used to slap together ramshackle accommodation.
One death. (Seven encampment fire deaths since 2010.)
Nine fires broke out over this past weekend, according to Fire Chief Matthew Pegg, including one at Clarence Square at Wellington Street and Spadina Avenue. Pegg warned about the danger of foam pods.
Encampments are profoundly unsafe. They’re ugly. Their very presence is an indictment of Toronto’s ongoing and escalating homelessness crisis. To say nothing, in terms of peril and social woes, about the brazen drug-trafficking that occurs, the public drunkenness, the zeitgeist eyesore, and the constant threat of menace for those who either live close by or who have to pick their way across these particular urban landscapes.
And yet, I cannot disagree with the moratorium chorus arising from advocates, everso-earnest do-gooders, street preachers and streets nurses, enablers, homeless-huggers — the whole righteous congregation of activists who endlessly shame the city for its purported cold heart, a dearth of compassion for the most unfortunate souls amongst us.
Which isn’t anywhere near true: $171 million projected to be spent on a shelter system with upwards of 6,000 beds by the end of this year, $237 million for 2021.
With the arrival of the pandemic, 620 additional spaces have been added to the network, a combination of shelter and 24-hour respite beds, hotels rooms and supporting housing units.
It’s not enough, it’s never enough, and clearly not when confronted by an unprecedented, unanticipated public health crisis.
Since April, about 1,100 people have been steered from encampments to the shelter system through the Streets to Homes program and a further 350 directly from the streets. Nearly four out of 10, as per the fresh data, have never used the shelter system before; 692 had availed themselves of “bednights” previous to the pandemic. But out of 956 admitted into shelters, more than 300 had subsequently left “for unknown locations,” as Gord Tanner, director, Homeless Initiatives and Prevention Services, told the committee.
Some decline what’s on offer, recoiling from the overcrowded conditions — a 98 per cent occupancy rate on any given night. Some prefer to live and sleep outdoors, even in the depths of a Toronto winter.
With Toronto’s economy in a COVID — lockdown restrictions — swoon, there’s only so much money to address the myriad social needs for which the city is responsible. While a proposal on its way to the executive committee recommending the city implement a vacant home tax to increase the housing supply — similar to that which has generated millions in revenue for Vancouver — could bring shuttered downtown properties back on the market to sell, it should also provide more rooming house stock, especially so in those neighbourhoods where the poor have historically found cheap accommodation.
But that’s for later. For the right now, this is what we’ve got: tent barnacles as a physically distancing alternative to and augmenting of insufficient shelter beds, with COVID breathing down everybody’s neck.
I don’t see any other practical stopgap to the pandemic crisis facing the homeless constituency.
Certainly not the “2,000 more beds” in hotel rooms over the next four months, demanded by speaker after speaker, some of whom even objected to the 19 hotels now being used by the city to house the homeless because residents can’t take their dogs or feel “lonely” in a room by themselves. Or pie-in-the-sky housing options because the shelter spaces are fit “for a louse but not a human being.” Where would 2,000 more beds be carved out? Where would the money come from?
Advocates proclaim there are far more homeless than the city’s estimate — some putting the tent community at upwards of a thousand, and the encampments are a lifeline for them. They’ve called for the city to pony up $1 million to community agencies to provide for survival supplies and fire safety equipment at the encampments through the winter.
At a briefing, Mayor John Tory disagreed that 2,000 more shelter hotel rooms are needed: “I think a lot of the deputations today were based on false premises with respect to what the city’s plans are with respect to housing homeless people.”
He also disputed the estimated number of people living in encampments: “I’m not trying to minimize that number, but I think the numbers say around 400 that are in the encampments now.”
Of course, if you give them tents and generators, they will come. As they have. But there’s no benefit in rolling back such tangible assistance now.
Khaleel Seivwright, a carpenter by trade, explained to the committee how he’d taken it upon himself to build tiny insulated wooden shelters for the homeless, complete with smoke detectors and carbon monoxide monitors and doors that actually lock. He claims they’re not flammable and they adhere to 90 per cent of Ontario building cold regulations, though they’re not buildings per se. “They should be considered a viable and safe option.”
They’re bitsy fly-by-night shacks, for goodness sake, and shouldn’t be — aren’t, in fact — allowed in the best of times. But these are the worst of times. Not hearing much in the way of bright alternative ideas, however.
Mary-Anne Bedard, shelter, support and housing administration general manager for the city, was absolutely correct when she told the committee: “The best solution to protect people from the virus and the best solution to homelessness are one and the same. Ensuring people have access to safe, affordable and supporting housing.”
But after decades of trying to get there from here, the city can’t possibly make that housing leap in a matter of winter months.
In the month prior to the pandemic, Bedard said, the city’s intake centre — for securing shelter accommodation — fielded an average of 250 calls a day. In October, the average was 453 calls a day. “But it’s a fact that despite this increase, central intake continues to meet its customer service indicators.”
That elicited a round of nottrue objections from several deputants, who gave anecdotal examples of no-room-at-the inn when they called on behalf of homeless clients.
From Nov. 13 to Nov. 17, Bedard continued, when calls averaged 377 a day, 6.6 per cent (25 people) were not offered space that “met their need on the same day” and 3.4 per cent (13) who were not offered space that fit their need, same day, had called more than once.
The preliminary data does not indicate whether those people were able to find shelter by other means or if they already had shelter of some sort when they called.
“We also know there have been fictitious calls, which is unfortunate, because that wastes staff time and may delay people getting access to available shelter beds.”
That was a clear swipe at the apparent tactics of some within the activist platoons. The general manager has clearly had it up to here with accusations that city staff are not sufficiently responsive or caring.
Beyond dispute, as Tanner added: “Without also focusing on prevention and creating pathways out of the shelter system with more supporting and affordable housing options, investing only in more and more short-term responses like emergency shelters, will not help us to achieve our goal of solving homelessness and will just result in more and more people getting stuck using the shelter system as de facto housing.”
Sick people, mentally ill people, disabled people, evicted people, homeless women at risk of sexual assault, youth and trans folk with specific housing needs. However many hundreds living in tents.
A moratorium on eviction and dismantling encampments, yes. For now. But not forever. Only until the pandemic is declared over.