Towered
Superstar
Sounds like something spoofed in a game like GTA IV. Art imitating life imitating art. Sad.
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How to solve homeless issue?
- Thread starter Admiral Beez
- Start date
hawc
Senior Member
Is there anything to the notion that police allow certain parks to be just complete open drug use disasters to at least keep them all in one place rather than scatter them and then have to deal with issues all over the place?
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I’d support that. But put it in Fort Severn, Ontario.
evandyk
Senior Member
Like in the Wire?
Vancouver had something like this. There were a lot of public safety issues, fires, assaults, etc.
fiendishlibrarian
Active Member
Friend of mine is a librarian there. Things are far, *far* worse than you can imagine. Sounds like you were there on a "good" day.
SubHuman
Active Member
FWIW, I think the situation, at least for the subway, has improved somewhat over the last year. I've seen less of those kind of things, and don't seem to run into "security incident" delays as often. There are often security people at some station entrances, and maybe the strategically placed fare inspections have helped.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
No access without a library card. That’ll sort it.
I no longer live in the city itself, so I don't have a library card. I had some time to spare waiting for someone the other day and popped into a handy library branch. Please don't suggest taking that away. My local library also serves as a warming centre in winter and a cooling centre in summer. It's an integral part of the community (as libraries should be)
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I see your point. What drives me to consider harder measures is that this city and its religious/charities have deemed my community of downtown east as an appropriate place for an overwhelming majority of the city's homeless, mental illness and addiction services, in a perfect example of build it and they will come. Meaning that if the sane, sober and stable members of my community want to use the public library without encountering flailing addicts, incoherent mumblers smelling of piss and just plain unpredictable folks, they must leave their community as essentially exiles from what the city has turned downtown east into. In my own experience raising kids in Cabbagetown, after multiple bad experiences at our two local libraries, we began driving to the Leaside branch with its community of "normies" for reading circles and activities for the kids. I am sure the staff at the local branches would have loved to have the neighbourhood's children attend the same at their branch, but we're not coming if there's a crazed vagrant passed out in the stacks.
So, that's where we are, that's why I suggest hard measures, since the city and province will not take the necessary measures to control the issue, like dispersing homeless, mental health and addiction services to across the city and province, to force the billion dollar homeless industrial complex of charities and religious groups (the Salvation Army Canada alone is worth $1.5 billion) to partially move their services away from downtown east, to enforce laws and bylaws against camping in parks, ravines and public-owned spaces, and first and foremost, we need Queen's Park to provide housing, including supportive housing (for addicts and mentally ill) to every resident in Ontario that needs it. Until we eliminate the issue, I will not settle for our public libraries or public transit serving as a back stop. So, yes, no library card, no entry. In your case, if you have a library card from another city, that'll do too.
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hawc
Senior Member
Fellow Cabbagetown resident (Spruce St.) and couldn't agree more with all of the above.
The homeless services would say, "Hey we just go where the problem is...." Yeah, but.... you kind of also attract more of the problem when you set up your services in a certain place. And our area of the city certainly bears the brunt of the problem.
We also find ourselves putting the kids in a car and driving up to Moore Park or Leaside to play because our nearby parks, libraries and playgrounds are overrun with folks that shouldn't be there. Libraries aren't homeless shelters. Transit isn't a homeless shelter. Public parks and playgrounds aren't homeless shelters.
One of the big elephants in the room is that none of these service are reducing the problem. The problem gets bigger where these services are. There seems to be an induced demand similar to how building roads attracts more traffic not lessens the traffic.
Think about it, if you walk out your front door in the morning and there's a homeless guy sleeping on your porch and you yell "Get out of here!" and chase him off, he likely won't return. If you walk out and go "Hey, how you doing, here's some food. Tell me about your problems. You can crash here as long as you need too. Feel free to shoot up here too." You'll likely have all his friends living on your porch soon too.
Whatever we're currently doing isn't fixing the situation and just blaming it all on cost of housing and not enough services isn't going to fix it either.
The homeless services would say, "Hey we just go where the problem is...." Yeah, but.... you kind of also attract more of the problem when you set up your services in a certain place. And our area of the city certainly bears the brunt of the problem.
We also find ourselves putting the kids in a car and driving up to Moore Park or Leaside to play because our nearby parks, libraries and playgrounds are overrun with folks that shouldn't be there. Libraries aren't homeless shelters. Transit isn't a homeless shelter. Public parks and playgrounds aren't homeless shelters.
One of the big elephants in the room is that none of these service are reducing the problem. The problem gets bigger where these services are. There seems to be an induced demand similar to how building roads attracts more traffic not lessens the traffic.
Think about it, if you walk out your front door in the morning and there's a homeless guy sleeping on your porch and you yell "Get out of here!" and chase him off, he likely won't return. If you walk out and go "Hey, how you doing, here's some food. Tell me about your problems. You can crash here as long as you need too. Feel free to shoot up here too." You'll likely have all his friends living on your porch soon too.
Whatever we're currently doing isn't fixing the situation and just blaming it all on cost of housing and not enough services isn't going to fix it either.
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evandyk
Senior Member
That is literally why this is happening. Fix those two things and you don't have people living in the park and washing up in the library. Right now the parks and the library are the "services" because the province (the city, but we all know that Doug Ford wants to run Toronto, and has the power to do so, not the mayor) won't set up the actual services to address the issue, and it doesn't want to do anything about the cost of housing, which is the main root cause.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
None of those services have any interest in reducing the problem. You don't get to be the $325k head of Dixon Hall, $200k head of the Sally Ann, $175k head of the Fred Victor Centre, or the $170k head of the Good Shepherd Ministries (with a 37% increase in salary over 2022) by eliminating your client base. As for what came first to downtown east, the homeless industry or the homeless people, I'd argue you go to where the services are (there's a reason we don't see homeless encampments in Craigleigh Gardens or Scarborough's Guild Park). Same as why are there bears at the dump or seagulls at the picnic sites... you go to where the food is.
evandyk
Senior Member
I don't personally know the people you are talking about (I assume you do, since you have some detail on how they think), but I do know quite a few people who work in the area, including fairly highly compensated executives of non-profits, and every single one of them would give up their salary tomorrow if it meant nobody was living in a park or on the street. I'm surprised you have heard otherwise from those four people.
evandyk
Senior Member
I think @HousingNowTO knows quite a few of those people. In your experience, do you think the executives of non-profits trying to address homelessness in Toronto are interested in perpetuating the problem?
hawc
Senior Member
Yeah that's what we've been saying for the last 20 years and it ain't making a dent. And we do have good services for homeless people. More all the time.
At this point it's a little bit like saying, "Build more highways and you'll have less traffic congestion!" The opposite seems to be true.