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1. Bring the Troops HOME Now!
War and Housing – making the connections
2. Winnipeg
and Kenora – “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”
3.
Mr. Harper’s Calgary
4. Blueprint to end Homelessness
in Toronto
1.
Bring the Troops HOME Now! War and Housing – making the
connections.
Beric German is a long-time anti-war and anti-poverty activist.
We have worked together on many homeless issues - the inhumane shelter
conditions, tuberculosis and disease outbreaks, homeless deaths, and Tent
City
which was the largest and longest act of civil disobedience by homeless
people in Canada
since the Depression. Beric
has co-founded numerous anti-poverty initiatives including the Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee.
He is the author of an article called Spring Offensive, which critically examines Canada’s role in
Afghanistan. (Click
here to download "Spring Offensive")
The following is a portion of Beric German’s speech on the Pan-Canadian
Day of Action against the war held on October 28.
The Toronto
component of this Day of Action was called Bring
the Troops Home Now!
A march through Toronto
’s downtown ended with a rally in a public park called Moss
Park. Beric spoke facing the crowd
but also facing the Moss Park Armoury which was being protected by hordes of
police officers including the Toronto Police Mounted Unit.
“So we know why we’re here.
Just over there we train young people to go to
Afghanistan
.
And so we come here to support them, to call them to come home again.
(cries of COME HOME!)
Many people in this country
don’t have a home. (cries of
SHAME!) And many of the troops,
many of our young troops are poor people.
They won’t have a home either.
It becomes our job to ensure that the people of
Canada
have the right to housing, the right to a home.
Let’s bring our troops home. Let’s
make this a place where they can have a home, where all people can have a
home. (applause)
I have worked here in this area
for over 25 years. Where the
armouries is, is an area where we have the largest number of people who are
absolutely homeless in
Canada
.
Just across from the armouries, down Jarvis Street we’ve got a
place where hundreds of people live in the Salvation army, just behind these
buildings over here we have a women’s shelter, just down the road down
Queen Street we have another men’s shelter, just along Sherbourne to the
north another men’s shelter, just to the north at Dundas and Sherbourne
the largest day shelters for homeless people, further up Sherbourne a large
women’s shelter, just over here the largest shelter in Canada – Seaton
House – all near to where we train people to go to war.
(SHAME!!) We put a lot of money; we put a lot of money into this war
– to kill some of the people who are the poorest people in the world.
The
Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee calls on the federal government to give yearly, to
cough up yearly for all of us - $2 billion to save the lives of our people
to ensure they have the right to housing across this country.
That money today is going towards the murder of friends across the
world, on the other side of the world. And
we send our poor people after them.
On November 22
the TDRC is going to do something new. Our
demonstrations have always been cold on National Housing Day, freezing for
people who are homeless and so, we’re going to have a car rally.
Now we don’t want to be too un-eco friendly so we’ll only drive
for a couple of hours. Please
get a hold of us – look at our web site www.tdrc.net.
Please come out. Let’s
drive through the streets with our message – HOUSING FOR ALL.
We need federal dollars for housing.
We need them and we don’t need war. (applause and chanting HOMES
NOT BOMBS! )
I want to say
one more thing because there is something we should remember that happened
here. Just over here, a few months ago people were out here training.
Young soldiers training with rifles.
That was bad enough, but if you look over here behind the ball
diamond - it’s not long ago that we had a homeless man, a 59 year old man
Mr. Paul Croutch, who was murdered, who was beaten to death right over here.
Let’s create us all a home. Bring our troops home.” (applause)
Beric
encourages us to make the connections between war and housing.
If you would like to
learn how to participate in anti-war events in your community go to
www.acp-cpa.ca
Did you know that Canada’s housing history is directly linked to our military history?
I have been examining that history and I have learned that hundreds of
thousands of units of good housing were developed in what is now our defunct
National Housing Programme.
Many World War II vets and seniors will know about this - that one of
the great social benefits achieved after the war, which was quietly taken
away from us in 1993, was our National Housing Programme
Most people know the Tommy Douglas story, how we achieved our Medicare
programme, but I have learned in my travels across this country that not
many know the history of how we got our national housing programme.
During World War II, the Wartime Housing Corporation built 46,000 units of
housing, mostly for war-workers and they also helped repair and modernize
thousands of existing units. But,
when the war ended, more than a million Canadians in the armed forces were
ready to return to peacetime life, creating a housing demand that was
unprecedented.
- In
1945, the federal government declared Toronto
an “emergency shelter” area, forbidding people from moving there
unless they were starting a job deemed essential.
- In
1947, Toronto Mayor Saunders put an ad in newspapers saying “Acute
Housing Shortage in Toronto
– do not come”.
- In
1946, 600 homeless veterans protested and took control of the vacant
Hotel Vancouver as a protest. They
held the building for more than two weeks and due to enormous public
sympathy, it was turned into a hostel for up to 1,200 vets until 1948.
- In
1946, when Ottawa Mayor Stanley Lewis refused to promise housing for
Vets, the Vets’ leader Franklyn Edward Hanratty ordered an occupation
of the barracks. Eleven
vets, their wives and 18 children took over the Kildare Barracks,
unloading a truck with beds, stoves and washing machines to set up
house. More families
followed. Later that year,
buildings on the site were leased by the City of Ottawa
from the federal government for rental housing.
- Finally,
Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was born (now called Canada
Mortgage and Housing)
When our soldiers returned from war they demanded a place to call home.
Housing became a right that was worth fighting for, a basic right for
all Canadians. From the end of
World War 2 until 1993 our national housing program built 650,000 units of
affordable housing, housing 2 million Canadians to this day.
That is our legacy.
2.
Winnipeg
and Kenora – “The Wind that Shakes
the Barley”
In October I visited both Winnipeg
(at the invitation of the University of Manitoba Faculty of Nursing in
partnership with planners, architects and the community) and Kenora (at the
invitation of Pete Sarsfield their Medical Officer of Health).
I delivered a number of speeches, attended meetings of local groups,
met with aboriginal housing providers and had a first hand look at
homelessness and housing solutions in each community.
Not surprisingly, both communities face their own unique issues around
homelessness but they do share similarities.
- Neither
community has enough emergency shelter.
- Neither
has a dedicated emergency shelter for families with children.
- Neither
has a harm reduction shelter or a managed alcohol program.
- Both
have an extremely high rate of aboriginal homelessness, poverty, racism,
and NIMBYism (not in my back yard).
In addition, policies of exclusion abound in each community.
However, both have unique opportunities – they have energetic communities
and leaders who want to tackle the problem, they have land and they have
extensive experience developing, renovating and restoring housing.
In addition,Winnipeg
is home to a large inventory of mostly empty military housing on the Kapyong
military base providing a ready and obvious solution.
All that’s needed is political will and support for community
mobilization. I was fortunate to
be able to join an early morning picket of the Kapyong base with the
Winnipeg Right to Housing Coalition. I
saw street after street of neat and tidy and empty bungalows, all being
heated to prevent damage from the cold and wet.
I saw larger military buildings surrounded by green space and I could
picture what could happen here if there was a ‘wind’ and I don’t mean
a chinook.
Beric German, who I mentioned earlier, describes the wind
we need to create in order to make things happen.
The wind
that is necessary for the mobilization of people - for social change.
The wind has to stir people, it has to energize and warm people, it
has to compel people to gather, to be vocal, to insist and to fight for what
is right.
I describe this in more
detail in one of my talks “The
Wind That Shakes the Barley”
3.
Mr. Harper’s
Calgary
I have to qualify that I have never been to Calgary but I am keeping a close eye on it through personal contacts and the media.
I hope to visit soon to examine first-hand the housing crisis that
people are up against. It’s
critical that we examine Calgary
because in a relatively short period of time, more than any other community
in this country, Calgary
has become representative of the hotspots
related to homelessness and
it also includes the riding represented by Stephen
Harper, Canada’s
Prime Minister.
This year Calgary’s homeless population reached 3,436 people, an increase of 32% since
2004.
Calgary
’s vacancy rate has dropped to less than 1.6 per cent and housing prices
have risen dramatically.
Numbers never tell the whole story. A
number of shocking situations are unfolding.
They include a colossal shortage of shelter beds for singles.
There is a rapid growth in the number of families and children,
working poor and disabled people who cannot find accommodation.
Evictions continue against those people who have been forced to sleep
outside. There is an increase in
the number of homeless deaths, including more violent attacks and the murder
of a homeless man.
These are huge contradictions inCanada
’s richest city. Known as the
‘Heart of the New West’, Calgary
is described as a “cosmopolitan city of more than 1 million people with
breathtaking outdoor adventure in pristine wilderness.”
Yet homelessness and poverty have burst onto the scene, onto the
streets and through the doors of social agencies.
Several weeks ago a homeless man, Edward
Aszbach died.
His body was found about 25 meters from a tent in a field.
He was 43 years old. His
death was a homicide.
CBC called him a street
person. The Calgary
SUN - a drifter. When I
called staff at a Calgary
shelter they were upset. They
had posted his picture on the walls hoping to learn more about him and what
had happened.
A few days before Thanksgiving weekend, the City of Calgary
evicted at least a dozen squatters from a tent city.
Meanwhile, the Calgary Drop-In Centre, which has a capacity of 1,100,
has been turning away approximately 125 people a night.
That number is expected to more than double to 300 people per night
now that the cold has arrived.
Calgary
agencies report a frightening increase in homeless families.
There is no dedicated family shelter in Calgary. Agencies have ‘glued’
together ‘emergency shelter beds’ through churches, synagogues,
community halls and motels. This
was flagged as a crisis as early as February of this year but there was no
political response.
The good news today is that more than a dozen community agencies and leaders
came together to insist on action. Senior
staff from essentially all the organizations assisting homeless people were
at the table. The theme was
collaboration not competition. They
met with both the City of Calgary
and the Alberta
government and argued this was a life and death situation requiring
immediate action. They asked the
City to identify available city owned space and they approached the Board of
Education for space.
The Alberta
government has now allocated $1million, and the City of Calgary
$.5 million, for the Winter Relief Program.
Mustard Seed will open and
operate a temporary emergency shelter in a former Brick store for up to 300
people this winter. Inn from the Cold is hoping the Calgary Board of Education will
allow them to use a vacant school for families.
Media continue to responsively cover the crisis.
Emergency shelter will of course save lives but it is a band-aid.
Homes are needed, and Calgarians need an affordable housing strategy.
Perhaps attention to the Calgary
crisis will motivate Prime
Minister Stephen Harper to tour the local disaster and see for
himself. If 3,436 people were
homeless from a tornado, Calgarians and the rest of Canada
would expect that. We would also
expect federal disaster relief monies to rehouse people.
Hopefully Mr. Harper’s government will renew ‘SCPI’ (the
homeless emergency program) funding which only has 4 months left in it and
ensure a federal re-engagement in a national housing programme.
PS: Mr. Harper in the past has
represented Calgary
West (1993-97 as a Reform Party member), Calgary South West (2002 to present
for the Canadian Alliance and the Conservative Party). Click
here to send him
a message!
4. Blueprint to end Homelessness
in
Toronto
The Wellesley Institute has launched the Blueprint
to End Homelessness in Toronto – part of an ongoing initiative to
focus on housing solutions. The
primary researcher on the project is Michael
Shapcott, a long time housing advocate and TDRC co-founder.
A key component of the plan is to reverse the funding cuts and the
downloading that occurred in the 1990s (federal housing cuts in 1993 and
downloading starting in 1996; Ontario housing cuts in 1995 and downloading
starting in 1998).
Local communities are in the best position to assess local needs and
implement solutions, but they need the funding and program tools from senior
levels of government. I think
it’s terrific this report was initiated at the local level.
Rather than a punitive approach to homelessness it offers an array of
clear solutions, all with the critical numbers attached and the designation
of responsibility. A ward by
ward mapping of units built (or not!) since the federal-provincial housing
agreement in 2001 will undoubtedly dog certain politicians for years!
For more information, an e-copy of the Blueprint, the more detailed
Framework document, action tips and other materials, log onto www.wellesleyinstitute.com/theblueprint
Cathy
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