Homelessness Doesnt End in April
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1540 ... January 15, 2018
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Homelessness Doesn’t End in April:
Toronto City Council Must Start Building Shelters Now
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
Homeless people in Toronto are in crisis. In the first nine months of 2017, the city has recorded an average of 8 homeless deaths every month. Most of those who died were under the age of 50. Emergency shelters, whether they serve women, men, youth, refugees, or families, are packed full every single night, winter and summer. Even the sub-standard backup winter warming centres, 24 hour drop-ins, and volunteer-run overnight programs are full, despite conditions within most of them being appalling.
City Council can’t claim ignorance. For years, homeless people, front-line workers and advocates have raised an alarm about the worsening situation. Beyond the innumerable deputations and... press conferences that highlighted the problem, within the last two years the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) has organized protests right outside the doorstep of the Mayor’s luxury downtown condominium on three separate occasions calling for action. Still, the Mayor pushed through a 2.6 per cent cut to the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration in the 2017 budget (though he was later forced to reverse some of them), effectively guaranteeing the situation would get worse. Instead of expanding emergency shelters to meet the desperate need, and prepare for the winter, the City chose to expand its reliance on the backup survival spaces, where notoriously, basic shelter standards don’t apply. Most of these spaces are only available during the winter, and some are run by faith groups on a voluntary basis.
