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Newsletter No. 25 July 2006
I've been a street nurse in Toronto for 17 years. In the spring of 2004 I received the Atkinson Economic Justice Award which permits me to pursue, for up to three years, my passions for nursing and working on homelessness and housing issues. In this newsletter I hope to report on my activities, create a link to a broader group of individuals who care about these social issues and encourage critical debate. |
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Further information about subscribing to the newsletter is found below. I want to hear from you - about the newsletter, about things that are happening in the homelessness sector (what a sad term!), and about good things which will provide inspiration for all of us. ************************************************************************************************************* |
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1. Canada
’s Military and Defense Budget is a Threat to Housing. 2. Housing and International Human Rights. 3. The Count is In! 4. Motion J-40 or F-1. Call it for what it is – hate. 5. Failing the Homeless: Barriers to 6. Update on the ‘hotspot’ of Heat. Last week the federal government announced an additional $16.3 billion for defence shopping – helicopters, aircraft, trucks and ships. Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor told CTV’s Question Period that the Conservative Government considers these purchases to be a first step. The cost of the 1% solution, the long awaited and urgently needed national housing programme, is $1.6 billion per year. There is now every indication that the recent $1.4 billion announced for affordable housing, to be spent over a three-year period, will dry up and will not be renewed. Period. Armine Yalnizyan, an economist and the first Atkinson Economic Justice Award recipient, gave a speech entitled “The Ask” at the March 2006 National Conference on CED and the Social Economy. She reported on the two other major areas of federal spending besides health. The first is new investments in research and development. The second, spending on national defence and security which almost doubled between 1996 and 2006. Defence spending grew from $8.4 billion in 1996-97 to $14 billion in 2004-5. Last year’s federal budget gives Defence a $20 billion budget by 2010-11. Quite simply we have to face this
formula: Increased military and defence spending = reduced social program spending. Beric German addresses this concern in his article ‘Spring Offensive’. It is true that outdated military
equipment will need to be replaced, but the fact remains that less than 10%
of the new money recently announced for the military’s shopping spree
could have implemented the 1% solution and recreated our national housing
program. It really wouldn’t
take that much for the federal government to bring about an end to the
homeless problem and housing crisis in I recently had the opportunity of a lifetime when I joined with other Canadian women’s housing advocacy groups for an informal 4 hour meeting with Miloon Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing Rights. Canada has signed on to many international covenants declaring housing to be a human right, so Miloon Kothari was very interested in hearing about the human rights violations that are continually taking place throughout this country. The Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation and the National Working Group on Women and Housing hosted the June 7th meeting at the YWCA. Click here to view my slide presentation and informal comments.
On Friday June 23, ironically the
same day the City of So I was somewhat relieved to be drawn back into the real world by the endless stream of media calls asking for my comment on the City’s Homeless Count. Past experience tells me that when a Government report is released on a Friday it is meant to be buried. This report will not be! How many homeless people did the City count on April 19th? The magic number is 5052. Here’s a breakdown of a few of the numbers in this one-night ‘point in time’ survey: 5052
– the estimated number of homeless people in 3649 – the number in emergency shelters 818 – the estimated number who slept on the street (575 were determined to be in the downtown core) 275 – were in health and treatment facilities 171 – were in shelters for abused women 139 – were in correctional facilities Are these new numbers? Not really, but they did cost us $90,000. On any given night the City’s Shelter Housing and Support Division can tell us how many of the City’s 4000 shelter beds are filled, how many of the over 150 shelter beds for abused women are filled, and how many homeless people sleeping outside are seen by city funded outreach programmes. The good news is that the City was encouraged to ask a number of key questions like: Would people like permanent housing? A resounding 9 out of 10 homeless people repeatedly said yes - helping to dispel the myth that people ‘choose’ to sleep outside. Without a doubt the City will use many of these findings to lobby for the continuation of the SCPI funding and for more funding for affordable housing from senior levels of government. The bad news is that methodological
flaws continue to plague this study. Only
half of I knew that certain statistics, like
the 575 people determined to be sleeping in the downtown core and the 5 per
cent apartment vacancy rate in The
The
Globe and Mail on June 24 reported that Councillor Holyday said, “I’m
glad they did a count” but he is suspicious about over counting those
living outside. “As opposed to people being missed, there is a greater
opportunity for double counting.” The
Globe also reported that Councillor Pitfield said the City should start to
phase out shelters. links: Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee reports and analysis 4. Motion J-40 or F-1. Call
it for what it is – hate. I wrote about J-40 in my June newsletter: The motion is essentially one more attempt to criminalize poor and homeless people – despite the existence of the Criminal Code and the harsh Safe Streets Act, which is now being challenged in court by lawyer and TDRC member Peter Rosenthal. As Rosenthal wrote in a Toronto Star
opinion piece “To
use the allegation of an assault by one panhandler as a vehicle to increase
repression of all panhandlers is similar to racism: a wrongdoing by one
member of a group is used to attack the entire group.
Pitfield’s motion slanders all those people in our city who are so
poor that they must resort to panhandling.” I wondered if City Council would have the moral strength to defeat this motion outright or take the safe route by referring the motion to committee. On June 28, they did neither. To the dismay of housing activists in council chambers, councillors chose a more aggressive path for the motion, matching the spirit of its mover. Councillor Pitfield rose and ‘called the question’ and council overwhelmingly voted yes - ensuring no debate and no questioning of staff. The motion passed. City staff will now have to allocate
resources towards measures to discourage panhandling at City Hall and other
Civic Centres, involve the police in such endeavours, and work towards
developing what would be a Only 3 working days after the release of the City’s Homeless Count, Council gave a shot of testosterone to the notion that homelessness, poverty and circumstance can be criminalized and they gave their tacit consent, allowing for the continuation of the hate that exists to snake its way through City Hall corridors.
In June, Street Health released the findings of its report ‘Failing the Homeless: Barriers in the Ontario Disability Support Program for Homeless People with Disabilities’. 85 homeless people were interviewed to learn about their personal histories of disability, employment, housing and attempts to access disability benefits. The report exposes a litany of barriers and patterns of seemingly intentional discrimination that homeless people with disabilities face as they attempt to obtain ODSP. With the steerage of long time activist and TDRC member Beric German who works at Street Health and lawyer Sarah Shartal, the stories from the street, long known to many who work in this field, became quantified and exposed. 100% of the homeless participants were eligible for ODSP but 0% were receiving benefits when they became involved in the study. 100% of the 85 participants, whose ODSP applications were successful with the aid of the research team, were able to secure housing. As Shartal noted at the press conference: ODSP=housing=health. It could not have been more clearly stated than in the report’s dedication on the inside cover: “This report is dedicated
to the five study participants who died during this project for reasons
related to their health conditions and disabilities.
Three of these participants were still waiting for decisions on their
ODSP applications when they passed away.
Two participants had recently secured ODSP benefits, but their health
and well-being had already deteriorated so significantly that the benefits
came too late.”
In my July
2005 Newsletter I wrote about the ‘hotspot’ of heat. Sadly, a year later, there is little that is positive to say about the City’s response to the heat and smog emergency. This year, heat and smog conditions began plaguing the city as early as May. Despite the deputations and recommendations from community health and housing experts about the risk of extreme heat to vulnerable populations: the elderly, people who are homeless or living in rooming houses, there is minimal progress on an improved emergency response nor any real steps toward a longer term solution. Heat alerts are being declared, but the complicated formula used to escalate a heat alert to an emergency, which opens up public cooling centres, is a rare phenomenon. The City still has no central registry of vulnerable populations, no air conditioning loan programmes, no maximum temperature by-law introduced, at least not YET. Let your City Councillors know if you think they should pay more attention to solving this issue. Click here to contact your Councillor.
Cathy
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