Things getting worse for the homeless in Toronto - says Cathy Crowe.

It is 2019 in a rich country called Canada, tent cities like the ones under the Gardiner Expressway above are appearing around urban centres, and in a recent cold spell two of our homeless neighbours recently died outside in Toronto, our largest city. TorontotheBetter's Nov.26th conversation with homelesss advocate Cathy Crowe identified the realities of life in today's Toronto. Along with the explosion of heftily priced condos more people in the city are in need of any home at all and for those who suffer the consequences of homelessness insitutional reponders, are simply put, less than responsive. Shawn, Paul and others in attendance who told us of  their own periods of homelsssness know first hand how quickly lives can collapse when stable, afforable accommodation is unavailable, while Tyler expressed his sense of feeling invisible to many of those he had to interact with in this circumstance. The truth is that the homeless are caught in traps at both ends of what Cathy has called the de-housing process. The base-level problem is that there are not enough affordable homes and waiting lists are growing, while those living homeless then suffer not only ill health but lack of empathy as well as stigma. To make matters even worse, popular resistance in the form of improvised shelters, aka tent cities, are being demolished and political support has waned where once it was stronger, at least in some quarters. 

Videos of Cathy's TorontotheBetter presentation and our  ensuing conversation will soon be available  on this blog. To be notified about when they are please send an email to postmaster@torontothebetter.net with "emergency" in the subject line. How can we hasten the action on homelessness  that is all too obviously required? Time for  the city to declare an emergency, said Cathy, as was previously done a decade or so ago, when homelssness was formally identified by activists,including some TorontotheBetter workers, as just as much a disater as those environmentally and conflict generated. To join the homelessness resistance struggle with Cathy, Health Providers Against Poverty and others, sign the petition declaring homelssness an emergency at www.change.org.