Urban centres across Ontario and indeed all over Canada are experiencing a wave of homelessness as rents and home prices continue to rise. The ranks of the homeless not only include those with mental illness with no family or support or urban foragers but working people who despite their incomes and work have been evicted as their units are renovated and higher rents charged and cannot find affordable housing.
In Hamilton, tent encampments are dotting the city and as of December 2022 there are an estimated 1,509 people experiencing homelessness. In Toronto a somewhat more dated estimates puts the number of homeless people at over 7,000. In Thunder Bay, well over 200 are experiencing homelessness while the number experiencing chronic homelessness is around 600 people. Encampments in parks and assorted green space in or around downtown areas have become health hazards to the residents in the absence of proper sanitary facilities and in parks the prospect of taking children to play with tents nearby has become understandably disconcerting for parent.
The approaches to dealing with the problem and the strong debates involved are highlighted by what is going on in Hamilton. The most recent proposal has been a plan to “pitch” tiny homes on Strachan Street East just off the downtown area rather than have sanctioned encampments. Hamilton councillors have given early support for this revised encampment protocol as a pilot with plans to ultimately set up six such sites that would accommodate about 160 people.
There has of course been debate and opposition because quite frankly, the narrative around this process is misleading because you do not “pitch” a cabin, you erect or build one. Once you physically build something, it is not temporary but likely to become permanent especially given the torpor and inertia that accompanies most government decision making these days at all three levels of government. One only need visit other parts of the world to see what a poorly policed or implemented tiny homes program could devolve to: essentially urban shantytowns.
Of course, even if such a program is approved, one suspects that given the plethora of plans, regulations, and processes at assorted levels of government, it will take a long and expensive time to get anything done. After all, Hamilton has been working on a housing and homelessness strategy of various sorts since 2004 and here we are 20 years later and we are still working on solving the problem. If one checks in on Hamilton Housing and Homelessness Action Plan, here is the progress:
May 7, 2018: Housing and Homelessness Action Plan Update
December 12, 2016: Council receives 2015 and 2016 Report to the Community
June 24, 2015: Council receives 2014 Report to the Community
December 9. 2013: Council endorsement of Phase Two
June 11, 2012: Council endorsement of Phase One
October 2010: Housing and Homelessness Planning Group was convened to provide guidance to staff in the development of the Housing and Homelessness Action Plan.
2007: Council approved Everyone Has a Home: A Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness, Hamilton’s first comprehensive plan to address homelessness.
2004: Council approved Keys to the Home: A Housing Strategy for Hamilton, first housing strategy for the city since amalgamation.
Planning as a substitute for action has become an affliction at all levels of government in Canada and Hamilton’s homeless action plan has probably been about as effective in dealing with homelessness as the myriad of northern Ontario economic development plans have been in jump starting the northern Ontario economy. And with three levels of government using federalism not as a cooperative apparatus to tailor programs to local needs but as an excuse for passing the buck, we are a long way from addressing homelessness and housing issues at a national level.
What to do? Honestly, there is no quick and easy solution, but solutions do require some creativity, a willingness to work together to solve problems and the will and capacity to move and get something done. Sometimes that requires a crisis or natural disaster. Case in point? The Great Haileybury fire of 1922. In the fall of 1922, a massive wildfire hit the town of Haileybury in northern Ontario and several surrounding communities killing 43 people and leaving thousands homeless just before the onset of a northern Ontario winter. The solution, a quick and rapid improvisation that saw 87 streetcars from Toronto being sent up and fitted out with stoves and used as temporary accommodations.
Honestly, could such a solution work today? One imagines that there a lot of retired VIA railcars, TTC streetcars and GO Transit cars lying about that could be repurposed and set up on some of the sites being proposed for permanent encampments or tiny home subdivisions. Being streetcars rolled in and set up with sanitary facilities, heat, and air conditioning, they would look better than the myriad of tents or tiny cabins being proposed. And being rail cars on wheels, one might be able to afford the illusion that they are indeed temporary even though all of us know they are going to be around for a long time. However, being in built up urban areas, they might even be considered a little funky and eventually become part of the landscape in a more palatable way than tents willy-nilly and assorted mounds of garbage.
Mark my words, this is not a permanent solution nor should it be but in the absence of any real steps towards effective urban solutions, moving on a solution like this might be the best way to move forward in at least a limited fashion.
