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TDRC Media Releases |
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Media advisory June 24, 2004
300 Homeless People In the midst of the federal election and on the eve of the four day International Housing Symposium conference in Toronto, the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee held a public Vote for Housing Fax-a-thon yesterday, June 23, to send a clear message to five main federal party headquarters: people across Canada want affordable social housing and funding for the necessary supports to go with them. In the few short hours of the public Fax-a-thon on June 23, approximately 375 individual signatures were added to the petition at the All Saints Church Drop In. An additional 300 signatures poured into the TDRC office. During the four week campaign, over 2300 individuals and 100 organizations have signed the Vote for Housing petition. Poverty and housing groups, health centres and nurses, legal clinics, community centres, abused women’s services, churches, politicians, housing co-ops, unions, teachers, and homeless people all came together to Vote for Housing; yet, housing and homelessness continue to be swept aside, a seemingly non-issue on the national agenda. Homeless people die on the streets, poor people are unable to find housing that doesn’t eat up 50-70% of their low incomes, and the waiting list for subsidized housing is 100 miles long. As a result, 300 homeless people and their supporters rallied together for housing at a corner in Toronto with the largest concentration of homeless people in Canada. Despite the Vote for Housing Fax-a-thon being the first of its kind in Canadian history, only a few local candidates for the Toronto-Centre riding came to speak in support of housing, the media presence was minimal, and four out of the five main political parties appear to be ignoring this critical issue. TDRC will continue the Vote for Housing Fax-a-thon beyond the June 28th elections into the fall to ensure that whichever party is elected next week will not be able to ignore the needs of Canadians. For more information, contact TDRC at tdrc@tdrc.net -30- |