What’s cold is telling people to go to a homeless shelter in a city where its shelters are beyond capacity, some of those that do exist have safety/security issues. Until there is enough capacity, and pathways to supported housing for as many as can be housed, the alternative is what? The sidewalk ventilation grates?
We do actually have a number of solutions available, even the short-term, albeit, none are ideal.
We absolutely can lease more hotels/motels; that's expensive, and interferes w/the tourism sector, but its an option.
For refugee families, who currently occupy more than 1,500 units in the shelter system, we can literally rent them market-rate apartments and charge back what they can afford to partially offset the cost, which would free up those 1,500 units for those on transit, in parks, and on grates.
As expensive as market units are, they really aren't any more expensive than shelter beds.
For those who need intervention/care housing, the options are more challenging, in the near-term, still, hotels can get quick-retro-fits in some cases.
The TDSB does have some empty school sites which could get a 'quick and dirty' refit for shelter+ accommodations, that could be made ready in about 90 days if the determination were there.
****
Let me argue, that one of the reasons we haven't seen government make a more determined effort is because society, in some measure, has been accepting the usurping of transit, parks and the public realm. Though, curiously, not as much of an issue in the nicest neighbourhoods.
I wonder if the City simply gave a nod and a wink to encampments in Chorley Park, how long it would take the Rosedale set to find a better solution.
Actually, the more I think of it, the more I like this idea, a network of parks where encampments are allowed, pending sufficient affordable housing/social benefits increases to mitigate the issue.
Chorley Park - Rosedale
Ridgewood Park and Sir Winston Churchill Park in Forest Hill
Windfields Park and Banbury Park in the Bridle Path
James Garden - Close to the Premier's house.
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)