Homelessness is a systemic issue in Toronto, yet the city seems focused on upholding a facade of authority in lieu of saving lives. While the city has a shelter system of 7,000 beds, over 10,000 individuals are experiencing homeless each night; Toronto lacks adequate capacity to securely house its population. One carpenter, Khaleel Seivwright, has taken the crisis into his own hands: he builds “tiny shelters” for vulnerable communities. Motivated by his own experiences of sleeping outside in the winter, Seivwright constructs temporary accommodations equipped with carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and warmth. Previous tiny shelter residents are full of praise for Seivwright’s work, with one testimonial from Jennifer Jewell crediting Seivwright’s carpentry with alleviating her chronic pain and giving her a sense of home.
Although Seivwright argues that he is strengthening the City’s work, the municipal government is taking action to outlaw his tiny shelters. On February 12, the city of Toronto filed a blanketing injunction against unsafe wooden structures in parks, days before a fatal encampment fire broke out. The injunction oscillates between condemning shelters as illegal and portraying them as health and safety hazards, prioritizing bureaucratic red tape over critical initiatives. If successful, the injunction will suffocate non-mandated efforts to ease homelessness, and Seivwright will be forced to halt his life-saving work. Ultimately, the city of Toronto is fighting fire with fire instead of providing extinguishers to quell the crisis.
The backdrop of COVID-19 only strengthens the importance of individual sleeping units, as Toronto’s shelters have faced COVID outbreaks with dozens of cases and are no longer viable spaces for homeless individuals. With temperatures dropping below -10ºC, it is vital that the city of Toronto supports the health of its residents, rather than sweeping a demoded issue under a municipal rug of injunctions and bylaws. These rulings serve to maintain the invisibility of the homeless population, erasing them from Toronto’s landscape in physical and devastating manners: over the past four years, a recorded average of 96 people have died while experiencing homelessness in Toronto, and Khaleel Seivwright is working to buck the trend.
To get involved, you can push back against the injunction by joining nearly 100,000 signatories in a petition to John Tory. Additionally, you can donate here to contribute to legal fees, and to the Encampment Support Network assisting vulnerable populations.
