Mayor John Tory is standing behind a decision to dismantle a homeless encampment in the Rosedale Valley, despite criticism from some anti-poverty advocates who say the move amounts to a “ritual of humiliation and displacement.”
The city announced last month that it would break up the encampment underneath the Rosedale Bridge on Jan. 7, providing those living there 15 days-notice to relocate.
While the move has irked a number of anti-poverty advocates, Tory told reporters on Monday that it is necessary to preserve safety in the area.
“The bottom line is we can’t have people living in encampments. It is not safe and it is not appropriate to have people living in encampments, so we go out about dismantling those in a very orderly fashion,” he said. “The decisions are made by professional public servants, there is lot of notice given and I can tell you right now that there is space specifically set aside in shelters adequate to house all the people that will be dislocated by the dismantling of the encampment.”
Prior to the dismantling of any encampments, the city does send outreach staff to the area to help anyone living there get access to a shelter bed or other supports.
The city’s shelters, however, tend to be overcrowded.
On Sunday night, for example, 94 per cent of the 7,297 shelter beds city-wide were occupied, including 97 per cent of those set aside for women.
“What the mayor and his administration aren’t saying is that shelters and emergency spaces in this city remain full. They don’t mention that conditions within these spaces are difficult and often unsafe and that is because of chronic overcrowding, short-staffing and the general lack of resources that these spaces deal with,” Yogi Acharya, of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, told reporters during a press conference on Monday morning. “If the mayor and his administration don’t want people to live in the ravines and under bridges than they need to start adding adequate shelter beds and building rent-geared-to-income housing that people can actually afford instead of wasting city resources on subjecting homeless people to this ritual of humiliation and displacement.”
It is unclear how many people are still residing in the makeshift encampment; however late on Monday afternoon CP24’s cameras observed at least three different people who appeared to be living in the area.
One of them told CP24 that he will leave the area in advance of city workers arriving to dismantle the encampment on Tuesday but plans to return within a few days.
