A man cycles past an encampment at Dufferin Grove Park in Toronto, in September.Alex Lupul/The Canadian Press
For years, a vocal minority of social activists have effectively dictated public policy in Canadian cities. Homeless encampments in parks and beside playgrounds have not simply been tolerated, but recharacterized as legitimate neighbourhoods to be protected. Indeed, drive around Toronto and you’ll see signs that read “I support my neighbours in tents” outside million-dollar homes, where the families who sleep inside ostensibly have private backyards to enjoy. (Lower-income families without backyards, by contrast, actually have to share public outdoor spaces with those “neighbours in tents.”)
In the East York area of Toronto, there’s an encampment in a small park across from a subway station, and right next door to a daycare. The collection of tents has been there, with one brief interruption, since the summer, when parents and daycare staff first began alerting the city about open drug use, discarded needles, and loud altercations occurring at the site. One daycare worker reported someone from the encampment yelling at the toddlers playing in the daycare’s outdoor space. The staff no longer take the children on neighbourhood walks.
The city’s response so far has been to send a police officer to the daycare to “offer safety advice,” and also to erect a sign that says tents are not allowed in the park. The sign, at time of writing, hung impotently above a collection of tents: a perfect metaphor for the municipal paralysis that has allowed delinquent, disorderly and unlawful behaviour to effectively mandate that toddlers must be kept inside.
In Dufferin Grove, a big tent of compassion for homeless encampments begins to fray
It is plainly madness – but then, it’s a special brand of madness, because to call out the deleterious effects of these behaviours has been to invoke the ire of those aforementioned activists. You don’t support a safer consumption site metres from a school? Well then, you must be okay with drug-users dying. You want encampments forced out of parks? How would you like to be forced out of your home?
There is a very real problem with a lack of shelter spaces in cities trying to manage these encampments, which, in some cases, have led courts to block or stall efforts by regional authorities to have them cleared. That’s why there needs to be a two-pronged approach to tackling the issue: one that immediately expands shelter spaces while enforcing existing bylaws. Indeed, as long as there are shelter spaces, there should not be encampments in public parks. If there are not enough shelter spaces available, then municipalities must enact emergency measures – as the city of Barrie, Ont., did back in September, to positive early results – to urgently provide resources to get people off the streets.
It is not simply a matter of restoring the use of public spaces for everyone, but restoring a sense of order, of social cohesion, of faith in the institutions of governance. Because the longer visible signs of social decay are allowed to fester, the more inclined those with means will be to simply check out – figuratively and literally – leaving those without the ability to relocate to deal with playgrounds littered with drug paraphernalia. No one wants to live in a place where they perceive the rights of those breaking the law to take precedence over those who have chosen to abide by them.
City councillor and Toronto mayoral candidate Brad Bradford presented a motion to Toronto City Council last week that would see any encampment located 200 metres from schools, daycares or playgrounds removed within 48 hours. Council amended the motion, shortening the distance to 50 metres and creating a “three-strikes” rule whereby anyone residing in those encampments would be offered a shelter space no more than three times before the city could go in and remove them. It is unclear why city councillors believe an individual who has twice refused a shelter space would be amenable to moving into a shelter if offered a third time. It is also unclear why anyone should believe that this rule would be enforced, when there has been virtually no enforcement of the existing rules for months, or years.
The inertia on the part of law enforcement and municipalities has been outwardly endorsed by activists, and tacitly permitted by everyone else – many of whom are worried about being labelled heartless or cruel for demanding action on social disorder. But enough is enough. Yes, we need more shelters. We need more safe shelter spaces. But we also need to clean up our public spaces. We need encampments beside daycares removed immediately. We must have no tolerance for open drug use in playgrounds. We need to stop using stupid euphemisms like “unhoused,” and get real about what’s happening.
There is nothing normal about “neighbours in tents,” and everyone suffers – those living there, and the wider community – when we pretend there is. These signs of social decay are eating away at our cities, and the longer the problem goes unsolved, the harder it will be to fix.