Homelessness
It's a National Disaster!!

The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee will release its call for all levels
of government to declare homelessness as a national disaster

Thursday, October 8 at 10 am
Church of the Holy Trinity - 10 Trinity Square
(behind the Eaton Centre, south of Dundas Street West between Bay and
Yonge St.)


>Toronto Star,  September 29, 1998
>
>Civilized society feared at risk
>Homelessness `shocking,' Golden says
>
>       [photo]  ANNE GOLDEN: United Way president
>       at Canadian Club yesterday.
>
>By Kerry Gillespie Toronto Star Staff Reporter
>
>Homelessness in Toronto has reached a level that puts civil society
>at risk, Anne Golden, chair of the Mayor's Homelessness Action Task
>Force, told the Canadian Club.
>
>``We have now reached the stage where Toronto's shocking degree of
>homelessness has begun to make us look like an uncivil society,''
>the president of the United Way of Greater Toronto said in a speech
>yesterday.
>
>``For the first time this century, poverty in Ontario and especially
>in Toronto, is increasing while the economy as a whole is
>prospering,'' Golden said.
>
>``We are in an accelerating slide to a dysfunctional economics where
>the poor do worse while the well-off do better.''
>
>At the same time that Toronto is experiencing the strongest urban
>growth in the country, one in four of its families now lives in
>poverty and 80,000 people are at risk of losing their homes, Golden
>said.
>
>``If such disparities are allowed to continue, the very foundations
>of the civil society are at risk.''
>
>SHELTERS FULL
>
>There are more people than ever on Toronto's streets.
>
>``We are aware that the shelters are full right now and this is
>extraordinary for this time of year,'' Golden said.
>
>On any given night in Toronto there are 4,000 people in shelters.
>Golden says they expect the number to rise this winter to at least
>5,000 people a night.
>
>That figure is well up from last winter, when there were no more
>than 4,000 people a night.
>
>``All signs then point to an emergency in the coming months,'' she
>said.
>
>More than a quarter of a million households in Toronto are only able
>to afford rents that are below market level.
>
>DETAILED PLANS
>
>``We fear that the housing situation will worsen,'' she said.
>
>The task force's interim report came out in July and the final
>report is expected to be released early in January, 1999.
>
>The final report will include detailed plans on how to deal with
>homelessness in both the short- and long-term.
>
>But, Golden warned, if the task force's recommendations aren't
>implemented province-wide, Toronto will become an even stronger
>magnet for the homeless.
>
>Task force findings show that 47 per cent of all the homeless in
>Toronto in the past nine years have come from outside Toronto and 14
>per cent from outside the country, she said.
>
>
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   Canalising a river
   Grafting a fruit tree
   Educating a person
   Transforming a state
   These are instances of fruitful criticism
   And at the same time instances of art.
       -Bertolt Brecht
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Dennis Raphael, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Associate Director,
Masters of Health Science Program in Health Promotion
Department of Public Health Sciences
Graduate Department of Community Health
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, Room 101
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8
voice:    (416) 978-7567
fax: (416) 978-2087
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]