2015: The End of Homelessness in Toronto

Street Action on November 18th, 2006, for National Housing Day

In 2005 City Council banned sleeping in public spaces while endlessly debating what to do about homelessness.

Last fall, Humanize Toronto presented a petition to the mayor with 2300 signatures calling on City Council to end the talking and commit to developing a plan for social housing and to ending homelessness in Toronto within 10 years. We and about 40 other concerned people slept out in front of City Hall on the night of November 19th to make sure the mayor and councillors got our message.

Since then city council has proceeded to do a “head count” of the homeless population, while councillors continue debating and some threaten to criminalize panhandling.

This year, the Wellesley Institute has produced a detailed and practical plan on how Toronto politicians can take very concrete steps to end homelessness in our city within 10 years. Let’s make our politicians listen this time!

On November 18th, Humanize Toronto will be marking National Housing Day with a street action to welcome the new city council and remind them of their responsibilities to the homeless and the inadequately housed in this city. We will present an interactive art installation that will give the average citizen a feel for what it’s like to be in precarious housing conditions or to be homeless, and we will graphically illustrate the chasm between the need for social housing in Toronto and the amount of real social housing that has been built in the past 10 years. We will be inviting the population at large to join us in demanding the following from city council:

1. Commit to ending homelessness and fixing social housing in Toronto within 10 years
2. Adopt a plan -- such as the Wellesley Institute’s Blueprint to end homelessness in Toronto -- for doing so within six months of this years’s municipal elections
3. Commit to never criminalize homelessness or poverty in Toronto, revoke the ban on sleeping in public spaces and reject all proposals to ban panhandling in Toronto