OCAP and supporters gather to protest lack of shelter space for homeless populations during winter months
On December 15th, 2016, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty OCAP hosted the event “Rally and March to Open Shelter Space Now,” where about 100 Torontonians gathered around a city-owned building at Dundas and Victoria with posters protesting the lack of adequate space and resources in homeless shelters around Toronto. Despite the wretched weather conditions, Protestors proceeded to gather outside of Toronto City Hall. This was done in a collective effort to demand shelter for Toronto’s homeless.
Those who spoke outside the building stressed the horrid conditions caused by the overcrowding, currently found within Toronto’s shelter system, as well as the heightened risk on the lives of those who are homeless, not only when braving the cold of the Infamous Canadian Winter, but the rest of the year as well.
Not many individuals can remain standing in one position during the middle of a snow storm in Toronto. It is hard to imagine that anyone would willingly seek refuge in these precise conditions, if it were not for the existence of the disagreeable alternative—staying in a shelter. The estimated number of homeless people sleeping outdoors and in emergency shelters, Violence Against Women shelters, and in health and correctional facilities in Toronto on the night of April 17th, 2013 was 5,253. The estimated number of people who slept “rough” (meaning outside, on the streets), that same night, was 447.
The 2017 budget for the city of Toronto, focusing on Housing and Homelessness, exhibits serious cuts. $27.7 million will be cut out of shelter, support, and housing. The current homeless shelter system in the city of Toronto is reported as full, operating with over 90% occupancy each night. Occupancy is expected to remain above and beyond 90% in 2017.
Many reports have indicated that the sheer density of homeless people within shelters has led to severe overcrowding, coupled with shortage of resources; both of these require a rapid solution, in order to prevent widespread suffering for these individuals. This problem has only increased as the years have passed, as there has been very little action by the city of Toronto taken to remedy this problem.
OCAP has pledged to “continue to fight for the armouries to be opened as shelters, as well as for the City of Toronto to endorse its policy of keeping shelters at a maximum of 90% occupancy. Hopefully, also, the percent at which shelters are closed down within the central area,” according to organizer, John Clarke.
As groups like OCAP continue to place emphasis on the urgency with which this issue should be handled, it is likely that protests like these will attract attention from leading policy makers and administrators who would be capable of taking significant action.
The refusal of Mayor John Tory and his administrators to provide adequate shelter facilities, has been, according Clarke, “The extreme expression of the agenda of austerity that is being imposed in Toronto.” There remains this inextinguishable, effervescent hope displayed by not only those who attended the protest, but also those who support taking action for this issue and could not attend. The hope is that there will come a day where lives are not lost in a way that is, as OCAP continues to express, largely preventable if tackled by the collective efforts of policy makers and citizens alike.
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