They say CutBack, OCAP Say Fightback!!

TODAY: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

Today, OCAP activists occupied the roof of the former Hope Shelter at the corner of College and McCaul Street to protest the City of Toronto’s callous indifference to the crisis unfolding in the City shelter system.

Every night in our city, the shelter system is full to bursting, with women, families and people with health and addiction issues hit the hardest.

In April 2013, City Council, under tremendous community pressure, voted to enforce a 90% occupancy rate cap for the shelter system, ensuring that beds would be available to meet the unprecedented need for shelter services. However, the City has done precious little to make new shelter space available and every night of the year, the entire shelter system is full to well over 90% capacity. Indeed, not only has the City not opened new shelter spaces, but it seems content to stand by and let existing shelters close.

The Hope Shelter, which was closed on April 15 of this year, was a 124 bed facility that was a vital shelter in the underserved West End of the city. It consistently operated at or near full capacity, an indication of how crucial those 124 beds were to homeless people in the western part of downtown. The City promised that it would locate a suitable alternative space in the immediate area but more than 5 months later, we still haven’t seen those beds replaced.

The situation around the Hope Shelter is a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the current shelter system in the City of Toronto: a City government that is either indifferent to or actively participating in the erosion of necessary shelter services, all while developers and landlords scoop up buildings that have been or could be shelters.

We are in the midst of a profound crisis of homelessness in our city, with 4 homeless people having frozen to death on city streets in the winter months of this year. And even so, municipal government refuses to take any substantive action to prevent or at least stop the rapid disappearance of shelter beds. We are occupying the roof of the Hope Shelter today to draw attention to this ongoing crisis and to demand that the City honor its commitments to replace the beds lost by the closing of Hope and, more broadly, to enforce its own 90% occupancy guidelines, which means opening new shelter space immediately.

Today’s action is just the first in a series that OCAP has planned for the fall and winter of this year, to demand movement from the City to address the nightmare that the shelter system has become.

On Monday, September 21 at noon, OCAP will head to City Hall to confront the architects of this disaster directly and demand that Council take action to fix the shelter system. We have reached a point where empty dialogue and pointless concessions merely ensure that more people will die preventable deaths on city streets.

Today and on September 21, OCAP and our allies will begin the next phase in the battle to defend and expand the city shelter system. As the fall turns to winter, join us in resisting the neoliberal, developer-friendly agenda being pushed by City Hall and demand accessible, safe and decent #shelterforall!

OCAP activists and community members directly impacted by the closing of the Hope Shelter will be available to speak with the media at 10am at College and McCaul. — Ontario Coalition Against Poverty 157 Carlton St #201 Toronto, ON M5A 2K3 Phone: 416 925 6939 Fax: 1 855 714 0566 (toll free) www.ocap.ca Twitter: @OCAPtoronto Facebook: facebook.com/OcapToronto