Juno News - August 01, 2024


Toronto doubles down on failed homeless strategy


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

136.9062

Word Count

757

Sentence Count

53

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Well folks, Toronto City Hall has done it again.
00:00:03.900 They are foisting this, what's soon to be a shelter for 50, heaven knows what kind of
00:00:12.080 individuals, on a quiet neighbourhood in west of Bathurst Street in Toronto.
00:00:19.560 It's a story that keeps repeating itself and repeating itself, not just in Toronto,
00:00:23.960 but across the country. You've got the combination of drug addicted people fueled by safe injection
00:00:33.160 sites that turn them out into the street looking for shelter, plus a sanctuary city that takes in
00:00:40.860 far too many illegal migrants that they can't house. And this is what happens. This shelter was
00:00:47.560 supposed to open last November. It's to be operated by St. Felix Centre, which doesn't
00:00:53.860 exactly have the best reputation in Toronto, having operated a shelter at Queen and Augustus
00:01:01.560 Streets, whose occupants terrorised the neighbourhood for years. I saw them. I was down there. I did
00:01:07.940 stories on it. They also operate a shelter in Liberty Village in Toronto, which also has
00:01:13.920 terrorised the neighbourhood. I saw that and did stories on it. Now they're set to open a shelter
00:01:20.740 just feet, just metres from a safe injection site. And you know what's going to happen. There'll be
00:01:27.380 cross-pollination between the two. The residents in the neighbourhood were just caught totally by surprise
00:01:33.580 and they are angry, upset, worried about what's going to happen to what has been a relatively safe
00:01:41.840 neighbourhood until the safe injection site came in. Well, I'm perfectly stunned. So last summer,
00:01:49.440 we were meeting with Angela Robinson, the director of the safe injection site, about our concerns about
00:01:57.440 how things were getting really bad. We had a meeting with her and then just a few days later, I found out
00:02:03.120 that they were going to put a homeless shelter here. And I just was stunned because you have a safe
00:02:10.080 injection site, you have a school, you have a homeless shelter, you have this wonderful, vibrant, eclectic,
00:02:18.800 gritty, yeah, but we like that neighbourhood. And to me, it just didn't make sense.
00:02:22.720 And we knew nothing about this. Councillor Osma Malik had not let us know about this project. We
00:02:28.880 learned about it through a rumour. We've been trying to get answers from the City of Toronto
00:02:32.880 and they won't talk to us. This shelter is going to cost upwards, upwards of $880,000 per user
00:02:44.560 for 10 years. 4.4 million. Obscene numbers, absolutely obscene numbers. It is a lot of money,
00:02:52.720 and money that could have been spent on supportive housing perhaps, but it's where it's located. So
00:03:01.760 there is no outdoor space at all. It's surrounded by laneways and asphalt. There's nowhere for anyone
00:03:09.280 to go during the day. People are homeless, so there's nowhere for anyone to go. There's no programming
00:03:15.360 in the building that we're aware of. It's an unbelievably surreal, ridiculous situation. We all
00:03:24.160 just walk around going, anybody who comes into the neighbourhood looks at the building and they go,
00:03:28.720 you're putting a shelter there? Whose idea was that? That's what they say to us. Lois Dilbert lives
00:03:35.840 right near the safe injection site and has seen personally the fallout, the chaos, the mayhem
00:03:42.880 of that safe injection site. One can only wonder what's going to happen when this shelter opens.
00:03:49.440 I sit in my backyard, people either having psychotic break or high come down the laneway,
00:03:57.200 aggressive behaviour, defecation in the laneway, paraphernalia. It's horrible, daily.
00:04:04.480 Emil planted a beautiful garden on Adelaide Street. He fears the garden will not last once the shelter
00:04:13.840 opens. I think they'll relieve themselves in the garden and any other place because there won't be
00:04:21.040 any outdoor facilities for them and garbage will be thrown. They'll be walking through it. They'll be
00:04:28.160 sleeping in it. They'll be passed out as we can see at the safe injection site where they're passed out in the
00:04:33.200 lane right next to the safe injection site, which is a community health clinic. It's so ironic. It's
00:04:40.320 frustrating and it angers me that our city and the councillor for this particular riding totally disregards
00:04:49.200 the community's concerns and has totally ignored our concerns. It's yet another story of City Hall
00:04:57.680 using its muscle to foist an expensive, obscenely expensive shelter on an unsuspecting neighbourhood.
00:05:05.360 I've covered many such stories and it never changes and it's gotten worse under the stewardship of Olivia
00:05:12.160 Chow and her deputy mayor, Ozma Malik, who represents this neighbourhood and couldn't give a hoot
00:05:18.080 what happens to these residents. For True North, I'm Sue Ann Levy.