Toronto's Plan to Push Out the Homeless
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- Published on Tuesday, 24 March 2015 06:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1094 .... March 24, 2015
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Toronto’s Plan to Push Out the Homeless
John Clarke
The Mayor's Office in Toronto is today occupied by a much slicker operation than it was during the years of dysfunctional, bigoted buffoonery that unfolded under Rob Ford. Mayor John Tory has resumed the drive toward a fully fledged neoliberal city but has the basic political skills to frame his twin agendas of austerity and upscale redevelopment in the language of inclusiveness. He has been sufficiently proficient at this to rapidly create what Michael Laxer has termed an "austerity consensus" supported by the overwhelming majority of the Council, including its left wing.
The agenda of the developers with regard to the central part of Toronto is to complete the creation of an interwoven hive of... business, commerce, upscale recreation and high end housing. Standing in the way of this are enduring pockets of housed poverty and a considerable and growing homeless population. Those without housing, very understandably, have tended to gravitate toward the centre of the city and, over many years, shelters and other services have developed in this area. This situation is resented by those working for upscale redevelopment and not only because visible destitution impacts property values and ‘quality of life’ for those with the money to pay for it. It is also the case that the shelters, drop-ins and service agencies that homeless people turn to are located in areas that the forces of gentrification are laying claim to.
The General Manager of Shelter, Support and Housing Administration (SSHA) has submitted an "Infrastructure and Service Improvement Plan for the Emergency Shelter System" to the Community Development and Recreation Committee of City Council. It is a startling plan to remove homeless shelters from the centre of the city on a mind boggling scale. I'll return the focus shortly to this aspect of the report but, before that, I want to note that it also represents a response by the bureaucracy to the dramatic worsening of the homeless situation, the extreme overcrowding of the shelter system and to community based political action has been taken up on these issues.