I don’t get it. I watched a live stream with Johnny Strides going through a massive encampment at Allan Gardens in Toronto.
He said that outreach workers are in the park all the time (they were also there when he was filming), and they offer beds to the people in the encampment, but apparently, most of them decline.
So… do we have beds or not?
If we are offering beds, and people are refusing them, what else can you do?
What else we can do is address the problems with shelters that make them so undesirable to the population that they exist to serve, like the ones enumerated by another user.
A shelter seems like it should be an obviously better option than the dangers of the streets, so something must be broken if people so frequently decline it
It can be both lack of available shelter, and people refusing shelter as well. They aren’t mutually exclusive. From the article:
“It’s been hard calling central intake for people,” she said. “Since September… it hasn’t been an ideal situation. Sometimes you have to call all day, like three, four, five phone calls and then you might be able to find a bed for someone.”
So there’s no available bed for most of the day until there is for someone after the 5th try. There might be a bed available but it’s in Etobicoke when the person and their stuff is in Moss Park.
Even if you go by just numbers 9000 spots isn’t enough for 10 000 homeless in Toronto. But even more than that, the ability to get a person there, to keep them from smoking a cig inside or taking rec drugs in the room, needing a coffee, getting stressed in unfamiliar situations in some cases, or they have a dog with them. There are so many things going on that mean that just having “enough beds” isn’t enough to get them shelter and the dignity they deserve as a person.