Toronto’s homeless are in crisis, open the armouries now and save lives
Toronto’s shelter system is a “catastrophe” and the overflow
warming centres are crowded and unsafe. Mayor John Tory needs to reconsider his
position immediately and ask that Fork York and Moss Park armouries be opened
to the homeless, writes Sarah Polley.
On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve I stand, in shock,
looking at the scene before me in one of Toronto’s 24-hour overflow warming
centres. A young woman huddles under a blanket on a mat on the floor, inches
away from dozens of other people.
It is freezing in here. She closes her eyes, trying to shut
out the noise, the cold, and the horror of having to be here. A man tries to
make his way through the mats, (there are no aisles between them). He stumbles
and kicks her as he passes. It looks as though he may fall upon the other
people, huddled where his feet are trying to walk.
It is crowded, and tonight it will be more so. There are
only two bathrooms stalls, without a door to separate the space from the rest
of the centre. Tension is running high. It feels unsafe.
People who work in this community say this is the worst they
have seen it. The word “catastrophe” is used often, and it’s appropriate. These
places are hell holes at night. How, they ask, to even convince someone to come
in here?
If I am to take honest stock of my experience of being here,
for even 15 minutes, I can see how hard it would be to risk the violence,
disease and claustrophobia of one of these 24-hour centres when faced with a
choice between this and the deadly temperatures outside.
When I worked in the anti poverty movement in the mid-’90s,
I came here often, for meetings. The people I worked with warned that this
apocalyptic scenario was coming. When I look around now, it looks like
Dickensian London, a refugee camp or a humanitarian disaster in a Third World
country. It’s not what people imagine when they think of an affluent city in
Canada.
Every morning, these last weeks, we find ourselves shocked
by the cold, and over and over again, we hear the calls, from people who have
worked in this field for decades, for the armouries at Moss Park and Fort York
to be opened to the homeless. These calls are ignored, with the mayor saying
the use of the armouries would not be “safe” or “adequate.” Could he honestly
use those words to describe the scene I saw on New Year’s Eve?
The armouries have showers. They have space. And they’ve
been used before.
The armouries were opened in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2004.
Mayors Barbara Hall, Mel Lastman and David Miller all made calls to the federal
government, asking for them to be opened, the first time prompted by the death
of three homeless men. What is John Tory waiting for? A similar tragedy? To be
sure, that is on the horizon.
We have no national housing strategy. We have a shelter system
that is dangerously overcrowded. When these cold weather centres are closed in
the spring, the catastrophe remains. We are in the middle of a genuine crisis.
None of this is news, and none of it is spurring enough action.
Instead, we treat the cold snap as a sudden emergency with
makeshift solutions, such as these 24-hour drop-ins. As Joshua Tepper, a family
physician who works with Seaton House and the Inner City Health Team says,
“Almost every year I see our homeless freeze to death on the streets of our
city. We live in Canada. It’s not a shock that we have cold spells. How are we
not more prepared for this? How is this a recurring crisis?”
We have a homeless population in need of shelter year round,
and a shelter system that cannot contain the need. There is really no excuse
for these ongoing band aid solutions.
Who are we, if we can wake up in the morning, decide it’s
too cold for our kids to go outside and play, and then do nothing about the
people who are living and sleeping outside with no safe alternatives?
Someone is going to die. We need to wake ourselves from our
inertia. These conditions are our responsibility to change, this horror is on
our heads. We need real, lasting systemic change.
In the meantime, it’s too cold to stay alive out there, and
the overflow options available to the homeless to go inside are inhumane. Mayor
Tory, have the decency and strength to reconsider your position. Make the call
and open the damn armouries.
Sarah Polley is a
Canadian writer, director and actor whose films include Away From Her and
Stories We Tel
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