You Have Apprecciate The Concerns of Social In-Activists

If people presently using shelter facilities are given the opportunity to be integrated back into the community social in-activists lose their reason for being in existence. Social in-activists feed off the poor and oppressed in the same manner as leeches feed of carrion of various types.

Closing homeless shelters raises fear and panic
Poverty group plans protest, saying loss of beds will cause `chaos'
April 04, 2007
Donovan Vincent
City Hall Bureau

Poverty activists in Toronto plan to camp out outside city hall in June to protest what they call a "disturbing trend" toward closing homeless shelters.

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCRAP), the group organizing the protest, says the city is moving people out of shelters without adequate supports.

"The danger is if you take away that infrastructure (shelters and supports) without having safe affordable housing and adequate incomes," OCRAP member Gaetan Heroux said yesterday.

His group claims that between last fall and early summer of this year, 300 shelter beds in Toronto will have closed, and that shelter users are being moved into market rental units they can't afford on social assistance.

Also, Heroux says, those units tend to be in suburban areas where there are fewer supports such as food banks, counselling and medical services.

"The biggest problem is there isn't sufficient housing for people. And to dismantle this whole infrastructure that's been created that offers support is what we're concerned about," he said. The bed closings will cause chaos, he added.

The city's Streets to Homes program, launched in 2005 to find housing for the visibly homeless, has so far housed 1,000 people. But Heroux calls the program "problematic'' because it doesn't help those who regularly use shelters.

However, Phil Brown, general manager of the city's shelter, support and housing program, says a $40 million provincial and federal housing allowance announced last year is helping former shelter users in Toronto pay their rent for the first five years. A two-year, provincial pilot project is helping about 310 homeless people with supports such as employment training and access to health specialists.

The actual net loss of shelter beds in the city this year will be 110, Brown said. New shelters are to open this year, including a 60-bed facility on Caledonia Rd., and one with 40 beds in the entertainment district.

"Yes, we're closing shelters," Brown said. "But people are also moving into housing."