Advocates protest city plan to remove homeless camps in Rosedale Valley

Thestar.com
January 7, 2020
Gilbert Ngabo

Toronto homeless advocates are calling for a moratorium on the city’s plan to dismantle makeshift encampments in the Rosedale Valley set for Tuesday morning.

The city has issued warnings to people who camp under the bridges in the valley that the sweeps are coming. The city did previous sweeps to camps under the Gardiner Expressway last March.

City spokesperson Brad Ross said there were about 15 people living under the bridges in the valley as of the weekend, but only one person remained there by Monday evening. He said staff have set aside enough space in the shelter system for the people likely to be affected by the closures, and most had either moved on or have accepted services.

At a media briefing near the encampments on Monday morning, street nurse and longtime homeless advocate Cathy Crowe said the shelter system is always operating at full capacity, and the overcrowding is what is forcing people onto the streets. There’s an immediate need to add at least 2,000 shelter beds in order to address the shortage of space, she said.

“It’s a myth for the city to be saying there’s space for people to go to,” Crowe said.

Cathy Crowe and other advocates for the homeless hold a press conference to demand the mayor call off homeless sweeps scheduled for Rosedale Valley.

She said advocates has been asking the city to declare a state of emergency on the city’s homeless problem for nearly 20 years. In that time, the city’s population has significantly increased, and the problem has worsened. Destroying homeless people’s tents is like “essentially giving them a death sentence,” she said.

In a letter addressed to Mayor John Tory last Friday, advocates noted the shelter system is “overwhelmed” and that the real solution should be adding more shelter beds into the system, as well as building more publicly owned rent-geared-to-income housing.

“There is no justification for these sweeps in the midst of a deadly shortage of shelter space in the city. People are camped outside in the bitter cold because the housing crisis rages on unchecked and the city’s shelter system is overwhelmed,” the letter noted.

At the press conference, Yogi Acharya of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty said the city itself is aware these sweeps don’t work, as people just find another place to mount their tents or simply come back in the same place a few days later.

An eviction notice under one of the bridges that cross over the Rosedale Valley.

On Monday afternoon, along the sidewalks on Rosedale Valley Road, a handful of sleeping bags and bedcovers had been left unattended. Under the bridge on Mount Pleasant Road, a couple of mattresses were strewn in a pile of other items such as clothes, plastic cups, syringes and needles.

There were footsteps in the snow leading to an elevated tent in the woods a few metres away from the road, but nobody seemed to be inside.

More signs of life were visible in a fenced-off area underneath the Sherbourne bridge. An entrance hole appeared to have been cut in the fencing closer to the street. Inside, a few people were milling around amid packed suitcases, a handful of bicycles and beds. A plastic garbage can stood nearby.

Steps further underneath the Bloor Viaduct, wood frames and a hotel laundry cart appeared burned and left in disarray. More items were scattered around, including winter jackets, shoes, lanterns, a stuffed animal, a number of folding chairs and a naloxone kit.

City spokesperson Brad Ross said there have been fire incidents in the encampments and that they pose a risk to those living there.

Ross confirmed there had been a couple of fire incidents in the Rosedale Valley recently, and said it’s another indication these encampments can be dangerous for the people who live in them, and that the camps pose “a public risk” in general.

He agreed the shelter system is operating at or near capacity on a nightly basis, but added there is always space for referrals, sometimes outside the downtown core.

“We would never leave somebody outside. We’ll do our utmost to find somebody space for these particular individuals,” he said, noting shelters are simply a temporary measure of dealing with homelessness.

“The solution, of course, is affordable housing,” he said of the city’s long-term plan.

“The solution to this incredibly complex issue is all governments, not just the city but the province and federal and regional governments in the GTA, everybody needs to do their part.”