The Bottom is the Only Place I’ve Been
I was walking through Chinatown and Kensington recently when I passed a homeless busker. He had a long gray beardand a cheap jacket, and he was singing and playing “Illegal Smile” by John Prine on his old guitar without a B string. Ifelt bad I did not have any spare change on me.
I walked a few blocks down and saw a man sitting in a box with a few blankets over him. He asked if I could go into theRexall and get him a carton of apple juice, while trying to hand me some change, but I refused because I had my debitcard on me. “At least take some of this,” he said, offering me some hand sanitizer. I came out of the store with the applejuice and he told me to drop it in the box beside him. After I walked away, the man yelled at me, saying he was at thisspot every Saturday after 4:00 PM. I began wondering whether he was being optimistic.
I told this story to a friend. He told me there were two homeless people who used to be regulars at the gas station heworks at. He said his boss told him to stop letting them in, but he would still bring them cigarettes and snacks during hisbreaks. There was a time when they spoke about winter. My buddy complained about having to get a new coat. Thehomeless guys said they didn’t know if they’d make it through winter. They haven’t been seen around there sinceDecember.
There is a homelessness issue in Toronto. Maybe in the entire Greater Toronto Area, but in Toronto specifically, it’sdifferent. It has by far the highest population by area out of all Canadian cities, which means that the amount of homelesspeople is larger in smaller areas. Even with Toronto’s nearly 7,000 beds available in shelters, there are 8,700 homeless people roaming the streets on any given day. This would seem to indicate that even with the city’s recent efforts to open up more spaces for the homeless, the issue might be impossible to tackle. However, there are tens of thousands of empty houses in Toronto, showing how easily this issue could be solved if the government wanted to solve it.
One might argue that, since those houses are privately owned, the city has no business repurposing them to shelter thehomeless. However, we must think about this in a humane manner. The city’s homeless population are freezing to death.The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects people’s right to “life, liberty, and security of the person.” Howcan the city claim to guarantee this right without providing shelter to thousands of people? It cannot. Right now, lettingpeople freeze to death at our doorsteps is not only negligent, it is criminal.
The city understands that there is a homelessness problem but chooses to think of it in a twisted manner. It views thehomeless not as people, but as trash to be cleaned up. The policies implemented are not meant to keep people off thestreets; they’re meant to keep them out of the way. The city’s efforts to increase the available shelters are in vain. At St.Michael’s Hospital last week, there were twelve homeless people admitted into ER in a single night because of cold-related injuries who were looking for warmth and shelter. Though the treatments administered by the city may preventsome symptoms, but they do not address the disease. 80% of homeless people in Toronto call for more affordable housing. Toronto has the power to treat this disease, but it has its priorities wrong. The taxes for small businesses aredecreasing by 15% due to COVID, while the budget for transit and housing are only increased by 1.5%. COVID might beaffecting businesses negatively, but it is also causing Toronto’s shelter system to tumble in on itself. People are dying thiswinter. There is an urgent need for the city to increase taxes and direct that money towards housing programs.
For many people, winter is a matter of making sure you have the right clothes, making sure you have some extra Benadryl, and shoveling snow out of the driveway. For the homeless, it’s a matter of life and death.
Cover Photo by Avard Woolaver. Edited by Caitlin Andrews.