I notice this article also refers to Toronto's 'Streets To Homes' program.

Sure, some homeless people in Toronto are being steered into housing - 
generally in the outer margins of the city, often in a living situation 
with others with whom they may be incompatible, without sufficient 
income to live on and without ability to access the resources that might 
assist them to stay housed long-term or otherwise improve their quality 
of life.

This program relies on a 'rent-supplement' arrangement which lines the 
pockets of private landlords and which fails to address either the 
critical shortage of social housing (the waiting list for RGI 
accommodation is no shorter as a result of Streets To Homes) or the 
grossly inadequate level of social assistance and the minimum wage.

When the 'Streets To Homes' program kicked in early last year a parallel 
regulation was enacted that legally forbade outreach services (such as 
that run by Anishnawbe Health) from distributing survival resources such 
as sleeping bags or hot food to homeless persons. The claim is that 
doing so 'enables' people to remain homeless rather than making the 
transition into housing - whatever that is supposed to mean. (Sorry, I 
don't speak Bureaucratese).

It was also recently used as a pretext for a particularly brutal police 
action against a man who was living independently of the system in a 
self-constructed home under the Gardiner Expressway bridge (An incident 
I witnessed personally - see 
http://graemesgallery.atspace.com/Chris_Gardiner_Evicted) despite the 
fact he was hurting no one and costing the city not one cent - he merely 
sought to live as he saw fit, something which clearly freaked out the 
power-brokers at 100 Queen St. W. The operation against this one man 
involved dozens of cops and was carried out with a ruthless precision 
that was terrifying to watch.

So-called 'supportive housing' which incorporates 'bundled services' is 
also doomed to failure in many cases. As far as I'm concerned housing is 
a right which should never hinge upon someone's compliance with 
mandatory programs or 'mental health treatment'. While support resources 
need to be made available for people who wish to access them these 
programs need to be kept completely separate from someone's housing 
situation. The last thing vulnerable people need hanging over their 
heads is yet another pretext for eviction.

My own feeling is that this article doesn't tell the whole story - if 
Toronto's recent methodology or NYC's own history under Guiliani (sp?) 
are any indication I suspect that a mass of writhing worms is at work 
beneath the Big Apple's seemingly rosy exterior. The major shortfall to 
both mainstream journalism and academic studies in this area is that 
they generally obtain their information from the 'service sector' or 
governments rather than the people directly affected.

Graeme

Chrystal Ocean wrote:
> Globe and Mail
> Big Apple's homelessness model bears fruit
> By GARY MASON 
>
> Tuesday, September 5, 2006 – Page S1
>
> VANCOUVER -- Canadians like to think of themselves as far more socially
> progressive than their neighbours to the south. And yet when it comes to
> homelessness, it is the United States that has taken the boldest steps to
> eradicate the problem.
>
> And there isn't a city that has been more forward-looking than New York.
>
> In 1990, homelessness, not crime, was the No. 1 issue on the minds of most
> New Yorkers. The homeless were everywhere. That year, the census bureau
> estimated there were 12,000 people in homeless shelters on any given night
> and another 10,000 in visible street and park locations.
>
> The bureau would later concede that the estimates were likely low by four or
> five thousand.
>
> Six years later, you had a hard time even finding a homeless person in the
> Big Apple. The number of those in shelters was down to 4,000 a night, and
> the number on the street was estimated to be between 3,500 and 4,000. What
> happened?
>
> In a word, housing...
>
> Full article: http://tinyurl.com/kd3g7
>
> -------------------
> Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header --  to [log in to unmask]
> SIGNOFF SDOH
>
> DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.
>
> To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
> SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname
>
> To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
> Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.
>
> For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]
>
> To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
> SET SDOH DIGEST
>
> To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html
>
>
>   

-------------------
Problems/Questions? Send it to Listserv owner: [log in to unmask]


To unsubscribe, send the following message in the text section -- NOT the subject header --  to [log in to unmask]
SIGNOFF SDOH

DO NOT SEND IT BY HITTING THE REPLY BUTTON. THIS SENDS THE MESSAGE TO THE ENTIRE LISTSERV AND STILL DOES NOT REMOVE YOU.

To subscribe to the SDOH list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] in the text section, NOT in the subject header.
SUBSCRIBE SDOH yourfirstname yourlastname

To post a message to all 1000+ subscribers, send it to [log in to unmask]
Include in the Subject, its content, and location and date, if relevant.

For a list of SDOH members, send a request to [log in to unmask]

To receive messages only once a day, send the following message to [log in to unmask]
SET SDOH DIGEST

To view the SDOH archives, go to: https://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/sdoh.html