The City of Toronto's 'Streets to Homes' program is a mechanism
for attacking the homeless and driving them from the centre of the the
City. It dumps people without supports in outlying areas and is a
pretext for removing funding from the vital services the homeless need.
This program is up for one of two awards that will be announced on
October 6 and presented in front of the United Nations celebration of
World Habitat Day.
Below is the text of a letter that OCAP has sent to the
international body that hands out the awards.
World Habitat Awards
Building and Social Housing Foundation
Memorial Square
Coalville
Leicestershire
LE67 3TU
UNITED KINGDOM
Dear B.S.H.F.,
We have learned that the ?Streets to Homes? Program operated by
the City of Toronto has been entered and, indeed, is one of the
finalists for your annual awards. This program may well be held up
before the United Nations celebration of World Habitat Day as a model
of ?practical and innovative solutions to current housing needs and
problems?. Our organization has worked to challenge homelessness and
the devastation of services to homeless people in Toronto and we
writing to urge you in the strongest possible terms to avoid
legitimizing this City?s ongoing attack on poor and homeless people.
We say this because ?Streets to Homes? is a dishonest, pseudo
progressive component of and cover for this ugly agenda and it would
be massively unfortunate for your body to assist in the deception.
The underlying context for the situation I will lay before you is
a phenomenon of upscale urban redevelopment that, as an
internationally focused body, you will be well familiar with. Capital
is reinvesting in the central part of this City following an earlier
process of ?suburbanization?. Commercial and high end residential
development is sweeping into areas of the inner city where substantial
homeless populations and low income neighbourhoods have been
established. Low income housing stock is being lost and homeless
people are being demonized and persecuted in the interests of this
process. This is the economic and political backdrop to the
?innovative solution? called ?Streets to Homes? that you have already
held up before the world and that you may hand a prestigious award to.
Before you do, we want to provide you with a perspective that you
would not have heard from City officials or politicians that speaks to
the feelings of those who stand in the path of the redevelopment agenda.
We want to deal with ?Streets to Homes? from two standpoints.
Firstly, we will examine its glaring immediate shortcomings as a
program that claims to be improving the lot of those it brings under
its wing. Secondly, we are going to deal with the bigger question of
the overall agenda of the City towards poor and homeless people and
show the role of ?Streets to Homes? in facilitating this.
So, to start with a look at the immediate track record of the
program on its own terms, you only have to scratch beneath the surface
to immediately find factors that sound a note of caution. ?Streets to
Homes? may be putting people into housing units but on what basis?
The homeless population is, of course, concentrated in the central
part of the City but we can see that close to 40% of those being put
into units are finding themselves outside of that area. Indeed, this
understates things because the available figures include the area of
East York as part of the central area. This means that a definition
of central Toronto has been adopted that understates the degree to
which the program is pushing people from the actual core. To be
placed, without living income, services and access to affordable
transportation in outlying areas of the City is a recipe for isolation
and inability to secure the necessities of life. This factor makes it
less than surprising that, after the first seventeen months of
operating this program, 94 out of 269 people had lost their first
housing placement and fully11% of those placed had again become
homeless or their whereabouts were unknown.
We must also ask ourselves what kind of housing are people being
moved into? If the City had to show that it was housing people in
units that could be deemed as adequate and dignified, it would have
much less to shout about in terms of the ?success? of ?Streets to
Homes?. Many of the private sector units people are being placed in
are of the poorest quality. In the case of placements in municipal
housing units, the situation is something of a scandal. There are
over 70,000 people on the waiting list for public housing in Toronto
and many of them wait for over five years for a unit but ?Streets to
Homes? is able to move homeless people into a Toronto Community
Housing (TCH) unit if it is refused three times over by those on the
waiting list. If a unit is rejected repeatedly by those who have
waited years for rent geared to income housing, you can be sure it is
woefully inadequate.
In the course of our advocacy work, our organization has visited
TCH buildings and units that people have been dumped in that would
shock anyone concerned with basic health and human dignity. We have
seen people living in conditions of dilapidation and neglect in such
units that are so extreme that their health, safety and social
inclusion are more compromised than they would be in any homeless
shelter.
If people are being housed without proper regard for location,
ongoing support and any effective commitment to ensure the adequacy of
their living conditions, this only reflects something fundamental
about ?Streets to Homes?. It has been developed not as a solution in
the lives of homeless people but as a ?solution? to the problem of
homelessness as it exists for those concerned with redevelopment and
commercial activity in this City. The homeless are seen as a problem
to extent that they are visible, especially in the central area. The
intention is to remove them from view so that they are not sleeping on
the streets or asking for change in areas where tourism and recreation
find overt destitution an impediment to their business operations.
That?s why so many are being placed in units outside of the core and
that?s why anything that can be referred to as ?housing? will do
regardless of what it represents in the life of the person dumped in
it. This brings us to important consideration of where ?Streets to
Homes? fits into the overall agenda of the City around the homeless.
If this program were only a very shoddy and dishonest attempt to
put some people into housing units, we would regard a high profile
international award as ill deserved and laughable but our sense of
outrage would still not be as great as it is. However, the most
harmful element of ?Streets to Homes? lies in its use as a cover for a
broader agenda to attack the homeless. While a process of dubious
rehousing of some people proceeds, the City is closing beds within its
shelter system and defunding the services that the homeless need to
survive. The new religion of ?housing the homeless? is utilized to
hide the worsening crisis on the streets. Vital services for those
who access shelters or must sleep outside are being curtailed and all
complaints and concerns on this score are swept away by a chorus of
ill deserved triumphalism. Yet, people are not able to access the
overcrowded shelters. On the streets, they must deal with an
escalating and ugly drive by the police to push them out that proceeds
regardless of claims by the City that new, supportive approaches are
being adopted to assist those who sleep outside or who panhandle to
try and survive. Last year, Toronto police issued over 10,000 tickets
to homeless people who were panhandling (a massive increase) and, as
this is written, the City of Toronto is revealing a plan to crack down
on poor people who collect and return empty bottles and discarded cans
in order to try and survive.
That you have already made ?Streets to Homes? a finalist in your
competition is desperately unfortunate. As a program for housing
people it could better be called ?Streets to Slums?. As a cover for
an agenda of social exclusion in the service of upscale urban
redevelopment, it is as dishonest as it is harmful. In this most
wealthy City in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, the homeless
are being swept from view. Should you reward and promote such an
outrage, it will be a shame on your organization and on World Habitat
Day that will cry out for public exposure. Please consider this
letter and reject ?Streets to Homes? when you make your decision.
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
No comments:
Post a Comment