Address delivered to the Council of Canadians AGM on November 3, 2000 in Toronto by Cathy Crowe, RN, Street Nurse Toronto Disaster Relief Committee _________________________________ tel 416-599-TDRC, fax 416-599-5445, [log in to unmask] -- http://www.tao.ca/~tdrc _________________________________ Picture a refugee camp that looks like this. 40-50,000 people affected. 7000 are children. There are 2-4 deaths per week. There is no room left in the camp. Some stay with friends or family. Somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people are forced to sleep outside in the elements. Some have built shanty towns, squats or tent cities. The conditions inside the camp are substandard. Common areas are filled with mats for sleeping. There are only 2 toilets for 120 people. Violence is rampant, staffing inadequate, blankets may not be laundered between use. There is poor air flow and inadequate cooking facilities. The tuberculosis infection rate is 4 times higher than the population not affected by the disaster. Other infections – diarrhea, colds and flus are the norm. People remain in the camp so long that palliative care units have been set up! You’ve probably figured out that I am referring to the Toronto situation for displaced persons, de-housed people, commonly known as the “homeless”. This is the picture today and it worsens daily. It also exists on a different scale in most Canadian communities. I want to add that it matters little that the cold is coming, we should consider this intolerable in May or June. The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee outlines these conditions in a report released last week called State of the Disaster - Winter 2000. Its most startling revelation: many shelter conditions do not meet the UN Standards for Refugee Camps! Homelessness is our shameful history. I used to call it our dirty little secret, but it’s no longer so secret is it? This evening I want to tell you some stories of campaigns that built momentum and definitely set the tone for the work that the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee now engages in - the fight for a national housing programme and the 1% solution. I hope these stories will show you how momentum can be built. Homelessness has been a thorn in Toronto’s side for many years. Many of Canada’s anti-poverty campaigns have come out of our central core here in Toronto. From Sherbourne and Dundas, from All Saints Church, from Allan Gardens, and from this very church space. They are campaigns that originated from the particular and became general. They are campaigns that originated locally with small events or actions and frequently became bigger, sometimes even nation-wide. They are popular campaigns that involved homeless people. In common, they are campaigns that involved witnessing the truth, telling it despite huge obstacles, locating actions where people are, marching, demonstrating, and using the political and legal systems for policy change. They are incredibly rich, historic stories. Let me tell you about a few of them. 1. The Toronto Union of Unemployed Workers In the mid eighties the TUUW was organizing around homelessness - for housing not hostels; around welfare rates - for a 25% increase; around the Landlord and Tenant Act - fighting for the inclusion of rooming houses. They collaborated with the Roomers Association, with the drop-in centres and received financial support from churches. Alarmed at the extent of illness and death the TUUW put up simple paper notices in the drop-ins saying that if anyone heard of an injury or death to make contact with them. One day, in 1986 that happened. A man came into All Saints Church to report that a homeless woman had been found dead in the back of a truck in the alley. Street worker Beric German went there and learned it was Drina Joubert. He knew her. Police asked him to keep it silent. He called the media. Drina Joubert’s freezing death made front page news the next day. It outraged this city. The TUUW then initiated a coalition called Housing not Hostels which included organizations such as the Christian Resource Centre, the Open Door, the Downtown Churchworkers Association. Research was done about how to demand an inquest and how to have standing at it. One outcome of the inquest was Project 3000: 3000 units of affordable housing. During this period there were other wins: singles became eligible for FBA; roomers and boarders won coverage under the Landlord Tenant Act; singles became eligible for social housing and there was a 5% increase in welfare rates. Another story. 2. The Rupert Hotel December, 1989, only a few days before Christmas, a fire in a rooming house called the Rupert Hotel claimed 10 lives. The 10 died within minutes from smoke inhalation. It took days before all the bodies could be removed. Within 24 hours of the fire, rooming house tenants and housing advocates formed the Rupert Hotel Coalition and worked tirelessly for the next few years to improve safety in Toronto rooming houses and to create new affordable housing. The Rupert Pilot Project received funding, primarily provincial, to renovate 525 units of housing. Another story. 3. The Toronto Coalition Against Homelessness In 1996 within weeks of each other, 3 men, Eugene Upper, Mirsalah Aldin-Kompani and Irwin Anderson died on the streets of Toronto. Their deaths became known as the “freezing deaths”. It was the city’s first homeless death cluster. TCAH, a 26 agency coalition came together, fought for and obtained standing at an Inquest. For the 5 week inquest we filled the courtroom, provided a daily lunch outside on the sidewalk and fought for the right for homeless people to be expert witnesses. Only one was allowed, Melvin Tipping. Daily we produced an “Inquest Update” that was faxed to close to 1000, including the United Nations. Despite the Coroner’s refusal to allow the word housing to be used, the 5 person jury adopted all of our recommendations. For the question “by what means” did the men die, the jury stated homelessness. 1996 was the year that shaped where we are today. The freezing deaths were a symptom of a much more serious problem. 1996 was the year we saw the impact of the welfare cuts, the cancellation of 17,000 social housing units under development and the snuffing out of any future housing program. The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee In 1998 eastern Canada suffered the damage of the icestorm. I watched the government’s response to the icestorm and it challenged my conscience deeply. Everything I witnessed on television during this natural disaster existed to a hellish degree in the shelters and on the streets. Beric German and I formed TDRC, and I have to be honest, we formed a committee not a coalition. We needed to move fast and the political landscape prevented coalition building. We invited individuals we trusted and knew we could work with to become the founding Steering Committee of TDRC. They included people like Don Heap, Peter Rosenthal, John Andras and David Hulchanski, Jeannie Loughrey. Two reasons- they knew the issue, there was enormous trust, and commonality in approach. Retired English professor Norm Feltes did research that helped us illustrate that homelessness easily qualified as a social welfare disaster. The indicators: a significant number of people affected, a resurgence of old illnesses like tuberculosis, clusters of deaths. It was suddenly explainable to me, in a very helpful way that homelessness would never be alleviated without a massive government response to the disaster. The kind of response we would expect to see if a chemical spill or train derailment occurred. We wrote an Emergency Declaration. The document was factual but also passionate. Useful to a politician, a Rotary club member, a Grade 8 student or a church congregation. We launched the Declaration on October 8, 1998 but only after we had built support across the country with our allies. Without funding, we relied on email, community health and AIDS service organization networks for help spreading the word. On the morning of October 8, Canadians woke to a front page Toronto Star headline: Plight of the Homeless a ‘National Disaster’. By 9 am that morning every media outlet in the country was here for our press conference. Ursula Franklin, a woman of international stature, stood with us and called homelessness a man made disaster. 400 people, including homeless adults and youth were in this church. A meal was provided – pancakes and sausages. Everyone who attended was invited to come forward and sign the Declaration. We read their names out loud. We invited them to come with us and we marched to Metro Hall. Meanwhile, “back at the ranch”, or Metro Hall, every city councillor had the Toronto Star on their desk. When we arrived to deliver our Declaration to the Mayor we were invited into the Community and Neighbourhood Services Committee, which halted their meeting, and allowed us to speak. One hour earlier even they had endorsed the Declaration. Now, to our current work. There are some essential principles to our campaign that I want to tell you about. Examples of some of our strategies: We went national. We all know what the country thinks of Toronto and we had to go national immediately. We had to remain as an entity called the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, and fight for emergency relief measures here, yet give credibility to the national aspect of the disaster and call for federal solutions. Within weeks we had organized so that Toronto City Council, in a vote of 53-1 declared homelessness a National Disaster. We filled council chambers that day. The next piece of work was getting city councils across the country to do the same. They did: Ottawa-Carleton, Vancouver, Victoria, Peel Region. One month later the Big City Mayors endorsed. By this point we had 400 national, provincial and local organizations endorsing. The Mayor’s office. Well, to date Mayor Lastman has refused to meet with a TDRC delegation 11 times but we achieved a win in March, 1999. The Mayor convened a national meeting on homelessness to highlight the work of his task force. This was also the coming out event for Claudette Bradshaw, the newly appointed federal minister responsible for homelessness. TDRC insisted on holding a free and open community caucus at the Mayor’s event. After all, community based housing/homeless experts were coming in from across the country. It was our chance to meet them and plot. Over 120 people attended our caucus in Council Chambers. It was the birth of the National Housing and Homeless Network. It was also the meeting where homeless people and others were not allowed up to council chambers in the elevator. We stopped our proceedings until all were allowed in. Research and reports with a pulse. Research is useless unless it activates people and is part of a popular movement. There is a lot of useless research on homelessness and housing that may add to an academic body of knowledge but its usefulness ends there and frequently creates more harm. TDRC has always attempted to do research that leads to change and we organize around the results. For example: The State of Emergency Declaration was taken to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Geneva in Nov. 1998; another report called Death on the Streets of Canada also went to the UN. These led to the UN committee’s condemnation of Canada’s housing record and embarrassed the federal government. Another report called People’s Court demonstrated by first hand accounts the federal and provincial role in the disaster. Both governments were charged by a jury of homeless people and found guilty on all 4 indictments; Last week’s State of the Disaster – Winter 2000; and our ongoing Death Chart expose the local atrocities. I believe that all these reports have had a profound effect on both international, legal and moral understandings on homelessness in Canada. As Professor David Hulchanski points out it is clear that homeless people may have a right to vote in the upcoming federal election, but appear to have no right to adequate shelter or housing. The National Disaster Post. I’m not referring to one of Canada’s national newspapers, it’s the name of our newsletter, and apart from email and our web page, it’s our communication tool, our way of getting the message to the street. Our two outreach workers, Steve Lane and Bonnie Briggs, both whom have been homeless, deliver and “talk up” the issues at 40 homeless agencies in the city. Bonnie’s column “Lunch with Bonnie” is way more interesting and real than the Globe and Mail’s Lunch with Jan Wong. You can read it online on our web site! Solidarity work. June 15. June 15 was not a riot. It was a courageous attempt by OCAP and supporters to bring the truth to the Ontario legislature. In the aftermath of the obscene police attacks, a team of 10 nurses and a physician, part of a medical MASH unit had treated approximately 40 police and horse inflicted injuries. I was hounded by media and groups on the left: would I (we) denounce John Clarke and OCAP and my answer was no. TDRC was there and we know the truth of what happened. I believe that our ability to stand with OCAP during this period has allowed the anti-poverty movement to remain cohesive and morally strong. A sequella of June 15 has been the formation of the Allies group, a consortium of labour and social justice groups that plan to stand firm with OCAP. Students in Allan Gardens. TDRC will always support and stand behind a group that reflects our values. In this case I don’t know how they keep doing it, but a small group of students continues to sleep in Allan Gardens every Friday night since August 1999 when OCAP set up the SAFE PARK. Elan Ohayan, a U of T PhD student and member of U of T governing council remains in the Don Jail for two weeks now. He was brutally arrested for his act of protest - sleeping in Allan Gardens. The media. We cooperate and work with the media extensively. Their role cannot be underestimated. I’m not going to elaborate here but consider this. For the first time in this country’s history, a media outlet, the Toronto Star assigned a reporter to full time cover homeless issues – Cathy Dunphy. If you want to see more coverage of these issues write or phone editors of media outlets. There are tremendous forces at play attempting to downplay the seriousness of the issue. People events. We see each big event we do as a means to build momentum for the next and they must be diverse but more than anything they must include homeless people. On October 2, 1999, 2000 people marched from Allen Gardens, and wove through the epicentre of the homeless disaster. The importance of this event being where people are cannot be underestimated. The challenges are huge. I am only going to name a few. The freedom to speak, to do advocacy, to rally, to assemble, to protest. These freedoms are eroded by social agencies fearful of funding cuts, by liberal rhetoric that redefines advocacy or health promotion, by legislation such as the Safe Streets Act, and by police force and intimidation. The police visit people I know in their homes, at their workplace, on the streets, they listen on our phones, and they infiltrate our public events. Maintaining soul and sanity. Most people I work with don’t like to talk about this. It’s hard when so little change can be seen and when conditions are worse, to not feel a sense of desperation. For many workers and homeless people too, there exists sleep loss, desperate patterns of either work or other compulsive behaviour, depression, isolation, addictions. This is also, why we need you with us. Labour and the left. Divisiveness. To be honest I don’t have a handle on this issue, I just know it is huge. My union refuses to give 1$ to homeless advocacy work such as TDRC, even though there is now an obscene specialty called street nursing. All I can say is that labour and the left have no choice but to work together. The left must move off of discussion lists on the internet, from conferences to the streets with us and labour must help us with their people and their money. Charity model. This year John Andras of Project Warmth publicly announced the end of their sleeping bag distribution program. The same week Christ Church Deer Park, which runs an Out of the Cold Programme, announced the end of their Saturday night overnight shelter. I cryed when I heard this news. I cryed because it’s about time. Both are now saying that there is a government responsibility to house our people. I know they did not make the decision lightly. I applaud them both. The organizations, companies, unions that donate thousands to organizations like the United Way must seriously ask themselves whether they are supporting a charitable and non-political response to homelessness. I still await the day that a group comes to Kira Heineck, our coordinator and I and says, Kira, Cathy, “we’d like to give $20,000 to the Toronto Disaster Relief Campaign so that you can continue your campaign for a national housing programme.” Speaking of money....there are deals being made and this is perhaps an even bigger threat to homeless people. Money talks which is why there is also so much silence. One would expect municipalities to be fighting with us for a national housing programme, but bigger forces are silencing those voices. Money for Toronto’s waterfront, money for Toronto’s Olympic Bid, and federal infrastructure money that has silenced a municipal outcry. In a federally funded infrastructure program, how does housing compete with roads and sewers? Usually not to well unless it is in a protected envelope. What can an individual do? A group? The Council of Canadians? Well of course you can learn how to come out to significant events on housing and homelessness (there is a sign up list at the table). You can write letters, meet with politicians and hound them during elections for the 1% solution. Information is at the table. Can you put homelessness on the agenda of your group, your church, your union, and invite someone from our speaker’s bureau in to talk? Our number is 599-TDRC. What are you doing on November 22? If you decide there is one event or activity you can work on please make it November 22. November 22 is a National Housing Strategy Day. Watch for events in your community. In Toronto the day will be co-sponsored by TDRC and the City. Imagine that! We expect thousands of people at a public, free event outside of city hall. I have always believed the Council of Canadians is an effective and powerful voice for all Canadians. But....can you put housing issues more squarely on your agenda? We need you to feature housing on your platform of issues and fight with us for a national housing program. We have, in the housing movement, people with enormous expertise. You don ’ have to put a lot of resources into new research, writing or policy work. I want to invite the Council of Canadians to join the National Coalition on Housing and Homelessness. Members include the Canadian Auto Workers, United Church of Canada, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Canadian Labour Congress, Canadian Cooperative Association, and the Canadian Council on Social Development. It feels like a natural fit. I would love my next Council of Canadians mailing to include materials on the need for a national housing strategy. Now, I have to tell you why we’re going to eventually win that. Last year a federal Liberal party sponsored Pollara poll showed that homelessness ranked in the top 5 of issues of concern to Canadians. Before the 1998 State of Emergency Declaration it was off the map. We now have 4 of the 5 political parties talking housing during this federal election. They will watch us on November 22 and we will watch them. Let’s make sure our work translates into the reinstatement of a federal role in housing in the spring budget. All it will take is 1% of their budget, our money. Each one of you can help achieve that by working with us. Cathy Crowe, RN _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ A note for David Hulchanski: The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee and the National Housing and Homelessness Network campaign against homelessness with the help of donations. The two groups have no other means of support. Please send a contribution! Make the check payable to the 'Toronto Disaster Relief Committee' and send it to: Toronto Disaster Relief Committee 6 Trinity Square Toronto, Ontario M5G 1B1 tel 416-599-8372 fax 416-599-5445 [log in to unmask] -- http://www.tao.ca/~tdrc _________________________________ Our Web Sites have information and reports from all of our Quality of Life Projects! http://www.utoronto.ca/qol http://www.utoronto.ca/seniors ************************************************************* In the early hours I read in the paper of epoch-making projects On the part of pope and sovereigns, bankers and oil barons. With my other eye I watch The pot with the water for my tea The way it clouds and starts to bubble and clears again And overflowing the pot quenches the fire. -- Bertolt Brecht ************************************************************** Dennis Raphael, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Public Health Sciences Graduate Department of Community Health University of Toronto McMurrich Building, Room 308 Toronto, Ontario, CANADA M5S 1A8 voice: (416) 978-7567 fax: (416) 978-2087 e-mail: [log in to unmask]