Homes, not guards, will help homeless
Security personnel will patrol Toronto parks in an attempt to prevent encampments
“This is the bread and butter of what we do as a city, to keep our city clean,” Coun. Denzil Minnan-Wong said at one point during Wednesday’s city council meeting.
The discussion at hand was damaged garbage bins on city streets, a topic that provoked passionate remarks about public cleanliness from elected officials all around.
But Minnan-Wong’s statement could just as well apply to the city’s response to homelessness, a complex, intractable problem that Toronto has decided to solve as it would a busted trash bin: If there’s a mess, clean it up.
Last year the city spent nearly $2 million to clear homeless encampments in Toronto parks — encampments, it’s important to note, that were erected during a housing crisis in the middle of a pandemic.
Now it appears the city is doubling down on the private security tactic.
News emerged this week that Toronto will pay private security guards to patrol some city parks 24/7 in an attempt to prevent encampments from forming there altogether. According to CBC reporter Nicole Brockbank, who broke the story, the plan is for private security guards to notify city staff whenever a new tent is erected in popular parks like Trinity Bellwoods and Dufferin Grove.
In a statement shared with the Star, city spokesperson Brad Ross said that “should a contracted security guard witness a structure or tent being erected in a park, or one already in place, they will contact the city immediately and Streets to Homes teams will quickly engage with encampment occupants, offering services and safe indoor accommodation. The contracted service will be supported by the city’s corporate security staff.”
What this security on security operation will cost is presently unknown but whatever the figure, it is a profound waste of resources. That is, it is a profound waste of resources if a government’s goal is to chip away at homelessness: a goal that demands building trust with people sleeping rough and offering them permanent and safe housing opportunities.
On the other hand, if a government’s goal is simply to rid a space of such people, then the city’s plan to discourage encampments via private security may well prove successful. We know that when an encampment is cleared, its residents move elsewhere in the city; to other parks or ravines where they are less vulnerable to detection. They are still without homes — just not within sight or earshot of people who have homes.
“It is extremely revealing of the priorities of the city of Toronto that they are currently pursuing 24/7 surveillance of visible downtown parks this summer,” says Diana Chan McNally, an outreach support worker in Toronto.
“Keep in mind that there continues to be a dearth of housing available for unhoused people, and that the shelter system is operating at nearly 100 per cent capacity. The city is failing to provide the resources to address homelessness, and instead is putting effort into surveilling and criminalizing encampments.”
On Thursday, I spoke with a man named Jordan who is currently living in a downtown park near Toronto’s waterfront. He’s lived outside for two years now, avoiding the shelter system so that he “doesn’t have to deal with the drug addiction and fights” therein. He told me he has been on a subsidized housing list for six years. He wants safe and permanent housing.
Why, unless he matters inherently less than a person with a home, should he be forced to move into a situation in which he feels unsafe so that someone else can walk through a park unblemished by his presence?
It is no doubt frustrating to city government that many people living in encampments don’t want to move indoors to city-run facilities but that reluctance is not justification to boot them from public parks. It’s justification to provide permanent housing solutions by any means necessary. And this policy is a waste of those means.
“It begs the question,” Coun. Mike Layton told me, “why would we just have security officials going through parks when we could in fact have more support workers that have experience dealing with a homeless population and mental health issues? We have those people in the city. We’ve been using them. We could double down on that approach.”
The city would likely say it has exhausted that approach. In a statement shared with the Star, Mayor John Tory said “pandemic encampments” have shut down community amenities including parks and summer camps. “I support our professional city of Toronto staff doing everything they possibly can to try to prevent large outof-control encampments like the ones we saw at the height of the pandemic. Public parks should be safe, open and accessible to all residents,” added Tory.
On that last point we can all agree.
But while Torontonians have a right to public space in our city, we don’t have a right to ignorance about the poverty within it. Every spring and summer that poverty makes itself known in our parks. It will make itself known again this season, no matter how many dollars the city throws at private security guards.
Enforcement is no match for homelessness. Surveillance is no match for homelessness. Only homes are.