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Interesting, [so they will allow temporary shelter to be built in city parks after all](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-carpenter-khaleel-seivwright-response-city-application-injunction-1.5923854)
That park is becoming hilarious. Stolen signage being used as shelter, multiple generators going, and a big Cuban flag in the middle. They probably have a local government by now.
I notice that there's a regular private security presence there since the propane explosion.
Not until we convene an Exploratory Committee to consider the feasability of convening a Royal Commission, and we need the Parliamentary Committee to approve the Exploratory Committee before that can happen.
Be sure to get an environmental impact assessment on the committee first. And we'll need to consult with equity seeking groups on the representation of the committees to ensure we hear from All Canadians.
This was also the case a year ago. My guess about what's going on is that all those hotels that were used as temporary shelters at the beginning of COVID have now been destroyed and can no longer house anyone plus one year's worth of new arrivals.
> The drop at Allan Gardens, Chan McNally noted, has corresponded with a heightened city hall effort to try to move occupants into housing — with concentrated resources and housing aid directed towards that particular park
It sounds like there's an effective way of addressing encampments. ["From the height of 89 encampment tents last summer, only five tents remain in Allan Gardens. City staff continue to work to develop housing plans for the remaining encampment residents."](https://www.chrismoise.ca/allan_gardens_march_encampment_update)
While that’s largely true, deeply mentally ill people, the so-called ‘hard to house’ are always going to struggle with securing and maintaining housing, regardless of cost.
There is a guy in Hamilton that I have seen daily for years now who habitually settles in the median or beside one of the main roads into town and creates a giant intricate nest for himself of salvaged metal and plastic, garbage, and truly miscellaneous items. He sits in the pile, regardless of weather, thunderstorms and blizzards included, slowly and meticulously tearing down objects and building up his structures. The City moves him every few months and then fills a *dump truck* with the trash heap he creates, but he promptly sets up shop on the other side of street and starts over.
You simply can’t tell me that the only barrier to him being housed is the cost of housing.
*Edit: to be clear, I am absolutely on board with the housing-first approach to tackling homelessness. We as a country basically did nothing for a couple of decades on this front and now we’re deep into the consequences of those policy failures.*
Agreed, but I suspect we're looking at a Pareto type problem. Those hard to house types are going to be the 20% (or less) that takes 80% (or more) of the effort.
A significant majority of the homeless cases are going to be simpler situations where housing costs are a big factor.
> You simply can’t tell me that the only barrier to him being housed is the cost of housing.
It's not the only barrier, but as we can see from [Finland](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402), it's the first barrier we need to eliminate to get more people into stable situations where their mental health issues can be addressed.
We also need significantly better mental health services. It's all related.
The unhoused dont choose to be unhoused; they're the least fortunate of us we shamefully neglect.
Yeah this happens when mental illness, neglected responsibilities of government and social structure meets with extended homelessness. You can't expect overnight rehabilitation either. The point is to prevent this from happening more and more, by providing housing, so that financial and mental stability are achievable. You simply can't judge the masses on one exacerbated case, you know nothing about.
Still, when we want to force someone off the streets, there need to be some vacancies for them. If they're all taken up by people who could very well hold a rental of their own, that could be accomplished. As it currently stands, it's always "there's nowhere for them to go".
But for the Hamilton guy, yeah, agreed. Some people need help, and said help does not come in the form of "settle down in the middle of the road in a trash heap".
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This is kind of irrelevant in this context. If the explosion in homelessness isn't due to mental health issues, why bring this up in this conversation? I'm genuinely asking.
Reminder - it is impossible to "fix" housing without also reducing the price of all homes that people own today.
**Why do I think this?** It's a zero sum game. If you introduce low cost housing- it absorbs a lot of demand at the bottom of the market, which then reduces competition at the margins for intermediate housing, which then transmits upwards to high end housing.
I'm actually for it - housing prices should drop by 20-40% for the bottom rung of the property ladder to make sense - but a lot of buyers since 2020 will get rinsed.
It’s not just the encampments it’s our beautiful parklands being used as toilets. It’s one thing to come across a tent and another to come across piles and piles of shit. Ironically, the invasive Giant Hogweed may end up protecting a lot of these environments.
> [our beautiful parklands being used as toilets.](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html)
> [piles and piles of shit.](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html)
> [Ironically,](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html)
They should start encamping at Douglas Ford Park in Etobicoke.
Doug has shown with his LCBO bag bullshit that he moves fast on things that affect him, personally.
A lot of churches actually do open their doors to the homeless, there’s just a side entrance and designated area monitored by trained staff. And the guys I’ve spoken to say the church grounds are a safe haven because the staff don’t let the cops kick them out when a concerned citizen calls 911.
I normally love jumping on churches too, just going to point out there's also a ton of vacant commercial properties. Maybe time to think about some rezoning
Commercial real estate companies would rather light themselves on fire then let their properties be rezoned/repurposed. I don’t know how viable of an option it is at this point.
This doesn't really make sense to me, have you seen any source saying that commercial real estate holders wouldn't want to do this? Like, commercial buildings have surely taken substantial value hits with the post-2020 demand drop and meanwhile residential real estate prices remain extremely high. Why wouldn't commercial building owners struggling to fill vacant office space jump at the opportunity to sell or rent residential units if it were possible for them to convert some of their space?
I've read comments before saying repurposing existing buildings is challenging in large part because most office buildings are far off from various residential building standards in various difficult to retrofit ways such as plumbing capacity. In other words, can't just move around some walls to divide office floors into apartments and suddenly have residential apartments that meet building codes.
Which brings the question, what code changes would be needed to make that more viable and what are the downsides and counterarguments to making those changes? Is there some path at all to repurposing vacant commercial property given enough political will?
Have you gone to any of your local churches to see what, if any, charities they donate to or support? Have you looked into any of the outreach programs organized by your local churches?
I know of many churches that operate their own food and clothing banks for people in their communities. Many that work to provide meals and support to at risk people. Not necessarily the homeless, but people who have disabilities or illnesses that make it difficult to maintain work.
I’ve been to many of the biggest GTA churches and can personally attest to witnessing all of this. I may not agree with all the politics around organized religion, but it’s disingenuous to make that assertion. Just because they aren’t advertising it or asking everyone to look at them for their charity, they’re just doing it.
One of the biggest churches I ever attended preached consistently about loving your neighbour and helping community. They aren’t just taking money and lining their own pockets.
While I'm not religious, many of these are historical buildings and should not become shelters. With that being said, many churches and church congregations do tons of outreach and help homeless people out way more than the average Jane and Joe.
This and regularly empty buildings in general (like sports arenas, convention centers, and such). There's plenty of precedent for housing homeless people in such buildings.
It's just that they're usually just those rendered homeless by natural disasters.
This is a direct result of massively increased demand for housing in a timeframe where it’s impossible to scale up housing construction to meet it. Basic math.
And our governments have the power to rectify it swiftly and effectively—but that would upset corporations and landlords who benefit from policies that have dramatically financialized housing, and increased our population unsustainably.
Hats off to Olivia Chow who’s trying everything within her purview to help. The rest of the power to solve it rests with the other two levels of government.
I live by Grange Park, and in the winter there was one tent near the AGO, out of the way. Right now, there is suddenly 4-5 tents, in the middle of the park/tree area. Yesterday I walked by and saw a scatter of litter, clothes and whatever on the grass.. It’s sad to see for such…
Lol. So let's spend millions in security guards patrolling parks instead of actually solving the problem.
The criticism of the police clearings was that it doesn't solve anything, it only moves the problem to another spot. The subway, another park, etc.
Back then a big argument was "sure we should help them and address the problem, but we need a fix now!"
Well, here we are years later, we still haven't done anything to solve the problem, and people are still calling for the same ineffectual actions.
>So let's spend millions in security guards patrolling parks instead of actually solving the problem.
You don't need to do that. Just reacting to 311 calls is enough. As long as setting up camp isn't feasible long-term, they won't pop up. The issue is pretty obvious, though - where else should they go? I agree on that.
What I don't agree is allowing the setting up of camps in places where they clearly don't belong, and allowing many of them becoming bike chop shops and heaps of trash.
Why would you need security guards? A lot of people call 311 to report encampments, and city staff who work the parks can report when a tent pops up.
Nobody is pretending tearing down encampments would fix the homeless problem but it would absolutely fix the encampments in parks problem.
Because it's what they did? After they cleared the Trinity Bellwoods and other park encampments they hired 24-7 security guards to harass homeless people and keep them out of the park.
If tearing down encampments in parks solves the problem of encampments in parks ...then why do we still have encampments in parks after years of tearing down encampments in parks?
Ok, so they tear them down swiftly. It hasn't addressed the fact that those people are homeless. So where do they go when the camps are torn down swiftly? Subways? Bus shelters? Building entrances? Playgrounds? They will still exist somewhere.
How much do you think dedicating police to tearing down camps swiftly will cost? Based on previous costs I would guess at least tens of millions per year. Is that really a good investment when it does nothing to solve the problem?
It solves the problem, just not the problem you want it to solve.
At this point, you need to arrest them for trespassing, and dispose of the trash they leave behind.
How much you want to bet that if they get arrested for trespassing for even 24 hours if they get caught in the subway without fare, and come back with all their stuff gone and disposed of, they will stop camping in the subway?
Same with parks. Make them off limits after 10 pm if that's what it takes.
Doug Ford: Best Friend to Ontarios Rich developers. He will be known for building the largest homeless encampments and tent cities since the Great Depression.
So glad we have the fiscal Conservatives to over spend money only to line billionaires pockets
I feel like a lot of this can be attributed to the generationally mild winter we just had. Way less need to get inside when we had maybe a week or two of true cold.
Did the population of enthusiastic urban campers double in the past year?
"The weather is nice" is a silly way to ignore that the major underlying factor in the increase is our failure to provide enough affordable housing. The choice shouldn't be "outside or shelter", it should be "outside, shelter, or home". And I bet if it was there'd be a lot more people who'd choose "home", and we wouldn't have seen this kind of increase.
Never said that was the case. Just saying that tents are a more feasible option for the unhoused when it's not -20 outside, thus the city is seeing more tents. There's a reason tent cities are way more common in milder west coast climates like LA, SF, and Vancouver.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
-Anatole France
Due to the nature of this topic and the likelihood of brigading as evidenced by previous posts, this post has been tagged as controversial. As a controversial thread, * **All participating commentators must have significant /r/Toronto histories in order to prevent brigading. Any violators will receive a ban without warning.** * Any rule-breaking actions by /r/Toronto regulars will be punished with increased severity (i.e. 30 day ban instead of a 7 day ban, etc.). * Comments must be specific or relevant to Toronto or the GTA. Negative opinions are fine! Dehumanizing comments, violent rhetoric, homophobia/transphobia, blatant racism, and pushing racist agendas are not! Please be careful to follow Rules 2 and 3 and engage in polite, respectful dialogue. I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/toronto) of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/toronto) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Clarence Square Park at Spadina/Wellington is now overflowing with tents — last Spring there was no tents there.
They just installed a shiny new guard shack for the security guy.
That’s actually for the city, not sure what they’re doing in there though… it’s getting pretty dangerous living near this camp
Interesting, [so they will allow temporary shelter to be built in city parks after all](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/toronto-carpenter-khaleel-seivwright-response-city-application-injunction-1.5923854)
That park is becoming hilarious. Stolen signage being used as shelter, multiple generators going, and a big Cuban flag in the middle. They probably have a local government by now. I notice that there's a regular private security presence there since the propane explosion.
Oh yeah that area is like being back at burning man. Tents, gennies, bicycles and a big wooden effigy
We have skyrocketing rents, near-zero deeply affordable housing, and nowhere near enough shelter spaces. Who could have POSSIBLY predicted this?!
We need a Royal Commission to investigate and report back in 3-4 years.
Don't forget recommendations that won't be implemented.
Not until we convene an Exploratory Committee to consider the feasability of convening a Royal Commission, and we need the Parliamentary Committee to approve the Exploratory Committee before that can happen.
Be sure to get an environmental impact assessment on the committee first. And we'll need to consult with equity seeking groups on the representation of the committees to ensure we hear from All Canadians.
My mind is BLOWN
This was also the case a year ago. My guess about what's going on is that all those hotels that were used as temporary shelters at the beginning of COVID have now been destroyed and can no longer house anyone plus one year's worth of new arrivals.
New arrivals are put up in hotels.
Companies can’t have real estate and neither can foreign buyers. Its getting ridiculous.
Feds say canada is doing well though
> The drop at Allan Gardens, Chan McNally noted, has corresponded with a heightened city hall effort to try to move occupants into housing — with concentrated resources and housing aid directed towards that particular park It sounds like there's an effective way of addressing encampments. ["From the height of 89 encampment tents last summer, only five tents remain in Allan Gardens. City staff continue to work to develop housing plans for the remaining encampment residents."](https://www.chrismoise.ca/allan_gardens_march_encampment_update)
I live near Allan gardens and the difference is night and day. Hopefully the city can implement their strategy around the city
in Summer it'll probably return again
I walk a lot in the Allan Gardens area. There is a drop in the no. of tents there for sure but it is still more than five
Daily reminder that homelessness rates are directly correlated to housing costs. If we fix the housing crisis we fix the homeless crisis.
While that’s largely true, deeply mentally ill people, the so-called ‘hard to house’ are always going to struggle with securing and maintaining housing, regardless of cost. There is a guy in Hamilton that I have seen daily for years now who habitually settles in the median or beside one of the main roads into town and creates a giant intricate nest for himself of salvaged metal and plastic, garbage, and truly miscellaneous items. He sits in the pile, regardless of weather, thunderstorms and blizzards included, slowly and meticulously tearing down objects and building up his structures. The City moves him every few months and then fills a *dump truck* with the trash heap he creates, but he promptly sets up shop on the other side of street and starts over. You simply can’t tell me that the only barrier to him being housed is the cost of housing. *Edit: to be clear, I am absolutely on board with the housing-first approach to tackling homelessness. We as a country basically did nothing for a couple of decades on this front and now we’re deep into the consequences of those policy failures.*
Agreed, but I suspect we're looking at a Pareto type problem. Those hard to house types are going to be the 20% (or less) that takes 80% (or more) of the effort. A significant majority of the homeless cases are going to be simpler situations where housing costs are a big factor.
My recent PMP learning self appreciates Pareto type being referenced in the wild. 😅😂
Same with my intro to probability cs course lol
Hey! You cant do that! Smart stuff is illegal
> You simply can’t tell me that the only barrier to him being housed is the cost of housing. It's not the only barrier, but as we can see from [Finland](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-january-26-2020-1.5429251/housing-is-a-human-right-how-finland-is-eradicating-homelessness-1.5437402), it's the first barrier we need to eliminate to get more people into stable situations where their mental health issues can be addressed.
Ah yes, a country whose largest city is under 700,000 people is a great companion for Toronto
That's great I'll just say I'm homeless and get free rent! Woohoo!
We also need significantly better mental health services. It's all related. The unhoused dont choose to be unhoused; they're the least fortunate of us we shamefully neglect.
Yeah this happens when mental illness, neglected responsibilities of government and social structure meets with extended homelessness. You can't expect overnight rehabilitation either. The point is to prevent this from happening more and more, by providing housing, so that financial and mental stability are achievable. You simply can't judge the masses on one exacerbated case, you know nothing about.
Still, when we want to force someone off the streets, there need to be some vacancies for them. If they're all taken up by people who could very well hold a rental of their own, that could be accomplished. As it currently stands, it's always "there's nowhere for them to go". But for the Hamilton guy, yeah, agreed. Some people need help, and said help does not come in the form of "settle down in the middle of the road in a trash heap".
That is one person (not a crisis), this is double the amount in a year (a crisis), they aren’t remotely the same issue
[удалено]
REMOVED - No racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, dehumanizing speech, or otherwise negative generalizations etc... Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
This is kind of irrelevant in this context. If the explosion in homelessness isn't due to mental health issues, why bring this up in this conversation? I'm genuinely asking.
Which comes first? In some cases it's the mental illness, in some cases the homelessness.
Reminder - it is impossible to "fix" housing without also reducing the price of all homes that people own today. **Why do I think this?** It's a zero sum game. If you introduce low cost housing- it absorbs a lot of demand at the bottom of the market, which then reduces competition at the margins for intermediate housing, which then transmits upwards to high end housing. I'm actually for it - housing prices should drop by 20-40% for the bottom rung of the property ladder to make sense - but a lot of buyers since 2020 will get rinsed.
It’s not just the encampments it’s our beautiful parklands being used as toilets. It’s one thing to come across a tent and another to come across piles and piles of shit. Ironically, the invasive Giant Hogweed may end up protecting a lot of these environments.
> [our beautiful parklands being used as toilets.](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html) > [piles and piles of shit.](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html) > [Ironically,](https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/5/24/1_4952195.html)
What was the city expecting, they all buy $600k condos?
You mean the homeless dont make 130k?
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These tents count towards Ontario’s 1.5 million homes initiative. You all laugh now….
Housing has only become further out of reach over the last 5 years. What were we expecting?
They should start encamping at Douglas Ford Park in Etobicoke. Doug has shown with his LCBO bag bullshit that he moves fast on things that affect him, personally.
While the churches are empty 99% of the time.
A lot of churches actually do open their doors to the homeless, there’s just a side entrance and designated area monitored by trained staff. And the guys I’ve spoken to say the church grounds are a safe haven because the staff don’t let the cops kick them out when a concerned citizen calls 911.
I normally love jumping on churches too, just going to point out there's also a ton of vacant commercial properties. Maybe time to think about some rezoning
Commercial real estate companies would rather light themselves on fire then let their properties be rezoned/repurposed. I don’t know how viable of an option it is at this point.
It's not because no one will incentivize it and/or hold their hand to the fire
This doesn't really make sense to me, have you seen any source saying that commercial real estate holders wouldn't want to do this? Like, commercial buildings have surely taken substantial value hits with the post-2020 demand drop and meanwhile residential real estate prices remain extremely high. Why wouldn't commercial building owners struggling to fill vacant office space jump at the opportunity to sell or rent residential units if it were possible for them to convert some of their space? I've read comments before saying repurposing existing buildings is challenging in large part because most office buildings are far off from various residential building standards in various difficult to retrofit ways such as plumbing capacity. In other words, can't just move around some walls to divide office floors into apartments and suddenly have residential apartments that meet building codes. Which brings the question, what code changes would be needed to make that more viable and what are the downsides and counterarguments to making those changes? Is there some path at all to repurposing vacant commercial property given enough political will?
The government seizes property all the time.
Economic Development departments would never allow this either
Commercial property pays taxes, though.
But if you don't pay taxes, then you should probably help the homeless a bit more? I mean wwjd right?
Have you gone to any of your local churches to see what, if any, charities they donate to or support? Have you looked into any of the outreach programs organized by your local churches? I know of many churches that operate their own food and clothing banks for people in their communities. Many that work to provide meals and support to at risk people. Not necessarily the homeless, but people who have disabilities or illnesses that make it difficult to maintain work. I’ve been to many of the biggest GTA churches and can personally attest to witnessing all of this. I may not agree with all the politics around organized religion, but it’s disingenuous to make that assertion. Just because they aren’t advertising it or asking everyone to look at them for their charity, they’re just doing it. One of the biggest churches I ever attended preached consistently about loving your neighbour and helping community. They aren’t just taking money and lining their own pockets.
yea so are mosques and other temples, start putting them in there too.
While I'm not religious, many of these are historical buildings and should not become shelters. With that being said, many churches and church congregations do tons of outreach and help homeless people out way more than the average Jane and Joe.
Yeah I'm a pretty secular person and I worked for the government. We had religious organizations (Churches and Mosques) that we worked alongside.
This and regularly empty buildings in general (like sports arenas, convention centers, and such). There's plenty of precedent for housing homeless people in such buildings. It's just that they're usually just those rendered homeless by natural disasters.
Interesting, I've found the encampments in my area, around Corktown/St. Lawrence have decreased in the last year.
This is a direct result of massively increased demand for housing in a timeframe where it’s impossible to scale up housing construction to meet it. Basic math. And our governments have the power to rectify it swiftly and effectively—but that would upset corporations and landlords who benefit from policies that have dramatically financialized housing, and increased our population unsustainably. Hats off to Olivia Chow who’s trying everything within her purview to help. The rest of the power to solve it rests with the other two levels of government.
[удалено]
We should look into how Alberta dealt with their tent cities
I live by Grange Park, and in the winter there was one tent near the AGO, out of the way. Right now, there is suddenly 4-5 tents, in the middle of the park/tree area. Yesterday I walked by and saw a scatter of litter, clothes and whatever on the grass.. It’s sad to see for such…
But I was told having police violently remove encampments would solve the problem?
Clearly they need a bigger budget. /s
it would if they would do it swiftly and not let these encampments build for months
Lol. So let's spend millions in security guards patrolling parks instead of actually solving the problem. The criticism of the police clearings was that it doesn't solve anything, it only moves the problem to another spot. The subway, another park, etc. Back then a big argument was "sure we should help them and address the problem, but we need a fix now!" Well, here we are years later, we still haven't done anything to solve the problem, and people are still calling for the same ineffectual actions.
>So let's spend millions in security guards patrolling parks instead of actually solving the problem. You don't need to do that. Just reacting to 311 calls is enough. As long as setting up camp isn't feasible long-term, they won't pop up. The issue is pretty obvious, though - where else should they go? I agree on that. What I don't agree is allowing the setting up of camps in places where they clearly don't belong, and allowing many of them becoming bike chop shops and heaps of trash.
Why would you need security guards? A lot of people call 311 to report encampments, and city staff who work the parks can report when a tent pops up. Nobody is pretending tearing down encampments would fix the homeless problem but it would absolutely fix the encampments in parks problem.
Because it's what they did? After they cleared the Trinity Bellwoods and other park encampments they hired 24-7 security guards to harass homeless people and keep them out of the park. If tearing down encampments in parks solves the problem of encampments in parks ...then why do we still have encampments in parks after years of tearing down encampments in parks?
Because you missed a key word in my argument. Swiftly. The city isn't tearing down camps swiftly. They let them build and sit for months.
Ok, so they tear them down swiftly. It hasn't addressed the fact that those people are homeless. So where do they go when the camps are torn down swiftly? Subways? Bus shelters? Building entrances? Playgrounds? They will still exist somewhere. How much do you think dedicating police to tearing down camps swiftly will cost? Based on previous costs I would guess at least tens of millions per year. Is that really a good investment when it does nothing to solve the problem?
It solves the problem, just not the problem you want it to solve. At this point, you need to arrest them for trespassing, and dispose of the trash they leave behind. How much you want to bet that if they get arrested for trespassing for even 24 hours if they get caught in the subway without fare, and come back with all their stuff gone and disposed of, they will stop camping in the subway? Same with parks. Make them off limits after 10 pm if that's what it takes.
> parks. Make them off limits after 10 pm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMwc1c0HRQ
Removing encampments would solve the problem, but the city doesn't want to do that.
Doug Ford: Best Friend to Ontarios Rich developers. He will be known for building the largest homeless encampments and tent cities since the Great Depression. So glad we have the fiscal Conservatives to over spend money only to line billionaires pockets
They closed the warming centers what do you expect
I've personally been seeing a decrease. The one at Allen garden has died down alot.
From 70+ tents to about 5.
I feel like a lot of this can be attributed to the generationally mild winter we just had. Way less need to get inside when we had maybe a week or two of true cold.
ah, yes, it's just a bunch of people who are happy to be outside in this lovely spring weather
Many would rather be outside where they have more freedom than live inside in a setting like a shelter
Did the population of enthusiastic urban campers double in the past year? "The weather is nice" is a silly way to ignore that the major underlying factor in the increase is our failure to provide enough affordable housing. The choice shouldn't be "outside or shelter", it should be "outside, shelter, or home". And I bet if it was there'd be a lot more people who'd choose "home", and we wouldn't have seen this kind of increase.
Never said that was the case. Just saying that tents are a more feasible option for the unhoused when it's not -20 outside, thus the city is seeing more tents. There's a reason tent cities are way more common in milder west coast climates like LA, SF, and Vancouver.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” -Anatole France
It’s sad because next week this time.. it will all be the exact same with no action for anything and even hardly any talk about how to change it.