Sir,
Is your government going to do ANYTHING?
"The best place in the world to live? Indeed!
Sincerely,
Dennis Raphael
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EYE Magazine December 9, 1999 (Toronto)
Homeless Hell
Last winter was a crisis. This winter will be worse
BY BRUCE LIVESEY
For Cathy Crowe, winter is the season of endless tragedy on the homeless front.
And this winter is looking particularly grim. "It feels like we're waiting for a
slaughter to happen," says Crowe, a street nurse ith the Toronto Disaster Relief
Committee. "It's unimaginable what's going to happen."
Already, says Crowe, Toronto's homeless shelters are filled and people are
turned away every night. More people are sleeping on the streets, where
tuberculosis and other diseases are on the rise. "Homeless people are dying at
the rate of two to four a week," says Crowe.
Last winter was considered the nadir for Toronto's homeless crisis.
nfortunately, this winter will be even worse. Homeless shelter occupancy is
expected to rise by 7 per cent, from 4,258 to 4,560 per night (it was only 2,060
in 1993).
The city will spend $95.6 million for hostel services -- 39 per cent more than
last year, when it was $68.6 million. But there are still 54,287 people on
waiting lists for social housing, an increase of 11 per cent over 1998. Despite
this demand, only 219 rental units were built in Toronto this year, according to
city statistics.
The homeless crisis gets worse because the causes are unchanged. Indeed, since
United Way president Anne Golden's report on Toronto's homeless crisis was
released 11 months ago, the Ontario and federal governments have done virtually
nothing. "As I said in my report, the whole problem will double in five years if
nothing is done," says Golden.
Homelessness is growing even though Toronto is booming and the unemployment rate
is at its lowest level in 18 years. To account for this apparent contradiction,
experts cite factors that are unaffected by the economic upturn -- the lack of
affordable and social housing, the end of rent controls, cuts to social
assistance and a decline in real wages.
David Hulchanski, a University of Toronto housing professor, points to the
federal government's decision to stop building social housing in 1993. "That's a
very major impact," he says. "We would simply see a lot less families
homeless if that housing had been built."
The Tenant Protection Act, which the Harris government passed two years ago, is
also taking affect. It removed rent controls on newly-vacant units. Since then,
landlords have been evicting tenants en masse and jacking up rents.
"Obviously, the homeless crisis is a direct result of tens of thousands of
people being thrown out onto the street through economic evictions," says Paul
York, an activist with the Greater Toronto Tenants' Association. York defines
"economic evictions" as those in which people are tossed because they can no
longer afford their rents.
The homeless population also includes more families, youth and children than
ever before. Josephine Grey, spokesperson for Low Incomes Families Together,
says the number of children living in poverty has climbed 142 per
cent since 1989. She says more parents with a high school education are
homeless, and are increasingly turning their kids over to children's aid
societies for economic reasons. "This myth that the homeless are a bunch of old
illiterate bums flies out the window," she says.
The housing shortage is exacerbated by low wages. Armine Yalnizyan, an economist
with the Centre for Social Justice, says full-time well-paying jobs have all but
vanished in the '90s. "More people are further behind income-wise than
they were a decade ago," she says. Given all of these elements, Yalnizyan says:
"We are looking at another horrible winter for the homeless."
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