The Price of Growth – panel, November 4, 2006

Planet in Focus film festival, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Panelists: Ken Greenberg, Sylvia Maracle, Martin Blake, Cathy Crowe

Moderator: David Crombie

Cathy Crowe – opening panel remarks

Growth?

The St. Lawrence Neighbourhood in Toronto was built when we had a national housing programme.  You can walk in that neighbourhood and really not tell which housing is social housing, which is co-operative, which are condos.  There are parks, schools, stores and services.  The community has been there so long it is now being refreshed with new trees and landscaping.  Thanks David Crombie, for what you did to make that community happen when you were mayor.

We built 650,000 units of affordable housing that now houses 2 million Canadians when we had our national housing programme.

That was growth!

What kind of growth are we talking about today?

Let’s look at recent history.  

•        Well, a few years ago Street City was closed.  Some of those people were displaced to Tent City , the large waterfront encampment.  Over 100 people again were displaced when Home Depot evicted them.

•       Central Neighbourhood House closed its drop-in centre. A few years later it closed its shelter on Jarvis St.

•       Then the emergency shelter in Metropolitan United Church annex was shut.

•       Tent City of course disappeared, albeit with a happier ending – the winning of the emergency rent supplement programme.

•       Last year the province began the process of closing detoxes – moving to a model of ‘home’ detox.

•       We’ve seen the City introduce a Shelter by-law which essentially legislates where in the city people can be provided with emergency shelter. There is actually a moratorium on new shelter openings in two downtown Toronto wards.

•       City Council overwhelmingly voted to introduce a by-law against homeless people sleeping at Nathan Phillips Square , and with one amendment that took one councillor about two breaths to say, the by-law was extended to all civic squares.

What growth have we seen this year?  Negative growth.

•       a supportive housing project for women, run by the Anglican church at Sherbourne and Dundas closed its doors. The women had been living there for many, many years.  Women began to be moved out earlier this year, dispersed to various apartments around the city.  Why did it close? The building was too expensive to keep up. Most community agencies that provided support for the women knew nothing about the decision and it is reported at least one woman became homeless again.

•       St. Stephen-in-the-fields Anglican church which provides necessary services for homeless and low-income people near Kensington market is fighting for its life – fighting its own Anglican hierarchy that says it is too costly to keep open.

•      Within All Saints church at Sherbourne and Dundas , (another Anglican church) are two of the busiest drop-ins in the city.  The church recently announced they would close one.  300-400 people use that space on a cold winter day.  The nearby community agencies and Toronto Disaster Relief Committee are fighting for an extension.

•       60 Richmond – an emergency shelter is due to close soon, albeit for new housing development that looks promising, but there are no plans for replacement shelter beds.

•       Council Fire made a decision to not open its emergency overnight shelter this winter. This means a loss of 60 shelter beds. There is no adequate city plan for replacement beds.

•       Goodwill at Jarvis and Adelaide is gone.

•       The Salvation Army Gateway Shelter on Jarvis that was beside Goodwill will soon be nestled up to new condos. Surprisingly the shelter is nowhere depicted in architects’ renderings of the new condo tower. How long before this shelter is forced out of the community.

•       Street outreach vans and programs are no longer able due to funding criteria to provide ‘survival’ supplies to homeless people living outside. What are survival supplies? Sleeping bags, blankets and food.

A community newspaper ‘The Bulletin’ this month published a viewpoint article by Eva Curlanis-Bart called ‘The north-south divide in troubled Ward 27’.  I hope the day will come when this kind of language is no longer tolerated in the press.  Curlanis-Bart writes:

“The big boxes in my neighbourhood are the mammoth social service facilities that have failed so miserably to address the needs of the marginalized.  Giant homeless shelters like Seaton House (630 beds), Maxwell Meighen (411 beds), the Gateway (108 beds), Covenant House (128 beds) Robertson House (190 beds), endless drop-in centres, a dozen harm reduction sites, correctional group homes, mental health residential facilities, thousands of units of social and public housing are located within a few city blocks from one another.  They warehouse the homeless, the sick, the disadvantaged, who in turn, impose a way of life that is inconsistent with the aspirations of this city as world class or this country as a western democracy (emphasis mine)   It is a lifestyle of violence, crime and degradation, or urban blight, terror and poverty – all within a shot from city hall.”

We need to hear the truth.  At the Toronto International Film Festival this year I saw the Spike Lee film Requiem for New Orleans ’.  If we had a Spike Lee here, and I know we have good film makers in Canada , but I’m learning how difficult it is to raise money for a film, I hope he or she would show the growth in homelessness and poverty in this city.

The growth he or she could show includes the following:

•       shelter (night and day) conditions worsening, overcrowding and under funding that in no way meets agencies ability to provide for basic needs (toilet paper etc.)

•       shelter conditions that just by their nature are unhealthy and leave people vulnerable to bedbugs… to tuberculosis… to emerging viruses like Norwalk or SARS…

•       Out of the Cold sector – reliance on the charity sector year after year to provide basic shelter for people

•       more outdoor encampments that range from cardboard and tarpaulin to more elaborate shacks such as Chris’ who lived under Toronto ’s Gardiner expressway

•       the mean-spirited way city officials and even the police collaborate to remove said structures and belongings

•       the vulnerabilities of men and women who are pushed away from safer city hall squares and public spaces because of new by-laws and NIMBY neighbours and police who make it clear people are not wanted in public view

•       families still stuck in crummy motels that the city uses for overflow because they don’t have enough shelter space and they won’t create new, decent and dignified spaces

•       growing hunger and food shortages in agencies

•       growing hate and discrimination targeted towards homeless people, particularly those with mental health or substance use histories. For example, Jane Pitfield’s proposed ‘Quality of Life by-law’ which would further criminalize panhandling

•        deaths – we are adding the 500^th name to the memorial board at the Church of the Holy Trinity on November 14

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, almost half of the $1 billion dollars from the 2001 Affordable Housing Programme remain unspent, a significant amount of that in Toronto .  

However, there are a number of things the city could do:

1.      Announce a moratorium on shelter closures.

2.      Replace the Out of the Cold shelter beds with real shelter beds.

3.      Open a 24 hour harm reduction shelter.

4.      Create a funding map to ensure services that provide drop-in space, food and outreach are prioritized for funding.

5.      Operationalize the Blueprint to End Homelessness, recently released by the Wellesley Institute. www.wellesleyinstitute.ca

6.      Appoint a Homeless Advocate at City Hall, with independence from the Mayor’s Office.

So, perhaps it is no wonder I was so interested in the students’ project that is on display here today.  Brett Boivin is a teacher at John Fraser Secondary school in Mississauga . The students in his visual arts design class began to explore the issue of homelessness and came up with a project to create emergency, portable shelters for homeless people who are sleeping outside. They have created over 20 and several are here today on display.  They are based on the principals of universal design and I invited Brett to display them here today to encourage some debate and dialogue. Please come and view the display.

We once had to bring emergency shelter, trailers and pre-fabs into Tent City as a form of disaster relief.  As more and more people are pushed outside and left outside – will we need to bring this form of disaster relief to them?

Thank you.

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