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Encampment eviction
Nov. 27th, 2023 02:22 amToronto has been in a housing bubble since I moved here in 2000, but during the pandemic things got even worse. Being homebound during lockdowns made people want bigger homes, people had extra money on their hands due to having less spending avenues, interest rates were kept low... The perfect storm. So both rent and housing costs have exploded. It now costs two million CAD to buy a narrow Victorian house in my neighbourhood. I'm pretty downtown so I know it's not quite as bad when you start looking to the inner suburbs, but you're still looking at 1.5M for a small house.
Anyway, so that lead to numerous encampments of homeless people in the city. Most parks had them. Last year the city decided to evict them and conducted numerous police operations to evict people during the summer. There was quite a bit of fightback around that but eventually the city was successful in its efforts. There was lots of effort by the city to rehouse people. The city leased a few hotels, and outright bought a few too, but these are supervised shelters with bedchecks; i.e. you're not outside but they're not your home either. But the city let some leases expired so that reduced that stock as well.
Another source of homeless people has been the steady arrival of refugees who were not handled by the federal government, but instead were just pointed to already-overstretched municipal services. Eventually the city had to "strike", i.e. refuse to deal with the refugees and leave them to the street, to shame the federal government into increasing funding. I think it was unfortunately cruel to those who had to stay on the street but I don't think the federal government would have budged otherwise. Some community groups tried to bridge the gap in the meantime but they weren't equipped to deal with that. One Jamaican church in particular reached out to what was primarily African refugees.
Anyway I digress. People who have been displaced by the encampment evictions were not all rehoused, despite claims by the city, and as it stands, traditional homeless shelters turn away over 300 people a night. People have had to find other spaces for encampments. One of these spaces is the front lawn of St.-Stephen-in-the-Fields, a radical Anglican church close to me. It turns out that the Church can use the land as a right-of-way, but doesn't own it outright, and the city can use many by-laws to exert control over it. The city tried to evict the encampment earlier this summer but the community came to its defense. A few weeks ago an astro-turf group (probably created by the local BIA) applied for a permit to set up a "pollinator garden" on the front lawn. Pushback by community members exposed the group's fiction--clearly, the idea is to displace residents, and the application was magically withdrawn. But on Thursday the city came to offer many residents housing, and on Friday, with fewer residents in the encampment, it decided to move in and try to evict it.
The community jumped in and tried to delay the eviction. Many of my comrades were there all day. I couldn't just up and leave from work, and didn't hear for a long time, so I kind of forgot about it, until I jumped on Twitter after dinner and saw that there were still people there, so scooted over. Unfortunately it was the beginning of the end. From what I gathered, the city was going to tear down half the encampment. There were 20 cops on the other side of the street, and about 10 or 15 comrades. Clearly not numbers that would make it worth picking up a fight with the cops. Eventually "The Claw" was brought in, a kind of sideways loader with a front box that opens up like a lobster claw. The claw picked at and tore tents apart, picked up and broke scavenged furniture, and everything else while other city workers swept the rest. Eventually a truck brought in metal fencing, which workers put up around the half that they had cleared. Then to add insult to injury, they posted 24 hour security to the site. This is a 4 by 8 meter site that's fenced-off; the security guard is either going to spend the day in a car that'll be running and polluting all day, and/or harassing people in the other half. I mean almost everyone has scampered at this point, but people will be back because not everyone was housed, and more people are becoming homeless. That security guard is probably going to cost something like $1500 a day, which could be easily put toward housing for more people.
I was just there for 2 hours but I was freezing by the time I decided to go home. I wasn't wearing winter boots but I was well-dressed and it was barely 0˚C. Can't imagine living out like that ever.
There was a tent fire in another encampment down the block in Kensington Market 8 hours later. Some people are accusing arson by a BIA member.
Anyway, so that lead to numerous encampments of homeless people in the city. Most parks had them. Last year the city decided to evict them and conducted numerous police operations to evict people during the summer. There was quite a bit of fightback around that but eventually the city was successful in its efforts. There was lots of effort by the city to rehouse people. The city leased a few hotels, and outright bought a few too, but these are supervised shelters with bedchecks; i.e. you're not outside but they're not your home either. But the city let some leases expired so that reduced that stock as well.
Another source of homeless people has been the steady arrival of refugees who were not handled by the federal government, but instead were just pointed to already-overstretched municipal services. Eventually the city had to "strike", i.e. refuse to deal with the refugees and leave them to the street, to shame the federal government into increasing funding. I think it was unfortunately cruel to those who had to stay on the street but I don't think the federal government would have budged otherwise. Some community groups tried to bridge the gap in the meantime but they weren't equipped to deal with that. One Jamaican church in particular reached out to what was primarily African refugees.
Anyway I digress. People who have been displaced by the encampment evictions were not all rehoused, despite claims by the city, and as it stands, traditional homeless shelters turn away over 300 people a night. People have had to find other spaces for encampments. One of these spaces is the front lawn of St.-Stephen-in-the-Fields, a radical Anglican church close to me. It turns out that the Church can use the land as a right-of-way, but doesn't own it outright, and the city can use many by-laws to exert control over it. The city tried to evict the encampment earlier this summer but the community came to its defense. A few weeks ago an astro-turf group (probably created by the local BIA) applied for a permit to set up a "pollinator garden" on the front lawn. Pushback by community members exposed the group's fiction--clearly, the idea is to displace residents, and the application was magically withdrawn. But on Thursday the city came to offer many residents housing, and on Friday, with fewer residents in the encampment, it decided to move in and try to evict it.
The community jumped in and tried to delay the eviction. Many of my comrades were there all day. I couldn't just up and leave from work, and didn't hear for a long time, so I kind of forgot about it, until I jumped on Twitter after dinner and saw that there were still people there, so scooted over. Unfortunately it was the beginning of the end. From what I gathered, the city was going to tear down half the encampment. There were 20 cops on the other side of the street, and about 10 or 15 comrades. Clearly not numbers that would make it worth picking up a fight with the cops. Eventually "The Claw" was brought in, a kind of sideways loader with a front box that opens up like a lobster claw. The claw picked at and tore tents apart, picked up and broke scavenged furniture, and everything else while other city workers swept the rest. Eventually a truck brought in metal fencing, which workers put up around the half that they had cleared. Then to add insult to injury, they posted 24 hour security to the site. This is a 4 by 8 meter site that's fenced-off; the security guard is either going to spend the day in a car that'll be running and polluting all day, and/or harassing people in the other half. I mean almost everyone has scampered at this point, but people will be back because not everyone was housed, and more people are becoming homeless. That security guard is probably going to cost something like $1500 a day, which could be easily put toward housing for more people.
I was just there for 2 hours but I was freezing by the time I decided to go home. I wasn't wearing winter boots but I was well-dressed and it was barely 0˚C. Can't imagine living out like that ever.
There was a tent fire in another encampment down the block in Kensington Market 8 hours later. Some people are accusing arson by a BIA member.