What is needed is a return to institutions, some people can not handle day-to-day living.
There is some truth to this, for a few. Especially if the province isn't willing to spend the same amount of money they spent to institutionalize people. Deinstitutionalization was supposed to come with a lot of extra support.
How much does it cost to institutionalize someone? More than a prison - which is about $130,000 a year.
Shouldn't then there be $100,000 entering the system somewhere for each person de-institutionalized (and still save money)? That's a lot of security, counsellors, basic income, drugs, etc. And security in the TTC. Though I bet we wouldn't need the extra security if they'd done the other stuff.
The issue isn't deinstitutionalization - it's that the Ontario government has failed to provide the promised support.
But that being said - that's really a very small minority of those. Living on the street (and streetcar) wouldn't change. Teenagers swarming people wouldn't change (which seems to be at least 12 of the attacks we've seen in recent weeks). People who have no history, and haven't done anything previously concerning wouldn't change. And if you wanted to put all those folks in as well - then that's far more money that would have to be spent.
It's time to bring back the death penalty. If we can't heal them cause we got no money, just get rid of them.
We should start executing the mentally ill, to save money? Really? I'd think anyone who actually believed that, would be on the top of the list for reinstitutionalization.
Perhaps we could start executing all the TTC passengers as well - that would reduce the city budget by a $billion or so.
But a 100% hike is not reasonable. Toronto property taxes are about the same as other major canadian cities.
Keep in mind, that those Ontario numbers include education tax, not just municipal tax. If you remove that from the numbers, the cities in the other provinces are closer. And Toronto would go down more, as even if Toronto houses costs more Barrie, they pay the same education tax rate - making a lot more education tax being paid in Toronto being non-municipal compared to many other Ontario municipalities.
Assuming there's 2 officers per station, that's enough to cover 40 of the TTC's 75 stations.
For one shift. Say 40 hours of a 168-hour week.
To cover 168-hours a week and 2 together, you'd need 300 for 75 stations. Probably more if people take vacations, statutory holidays, sick days, training, and don't spend 42 a week on-site!
But again deploying officers isnt going to fix the underlying issues, and it's not going to stop the incidents from happening. It's a cute knee jerk reaction.