It was supposed to be a safe, affordable home for Ontarians with nowhere else to go. But inside, it was horrifying: a cramped, foul-smelling basement with a concrete floor lined with metal shelves, and so many plastic bags lined up on the linoleum that you could barely see the space left between the floor and the ceiling.
By the time police were called, the woman who opened the door to the basement had already been inside for five hours, trying to find a place to live.
“What does it look like to you?” she asked the officer.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
This is the story of the city of Toronto’s homeless problem, and how a new system of “housing first,” aimed at putting people in private housing as quickly as possible, is working in a tough market.
It was supposed to be a safe, affordable home for Ontarians with nowhere else to go. But inside, it was horrifying: a cramped, foul-smelling basement with a concrete floor lined with metal shelves, and so many plastic bags lined up on the linoleum that you could barely see the space left between the floor and the ceiling.
By the time police were called, the woman who opened the door to the basement had already been inside for five hours, trying to find a place to live.
“What does it look like to you?” she asked the officer.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
This is the story of the city of Toronto’s homeless problem, and how a new system of “housing first,” aimed at putting people in private housing as quickly as possible, is working in a tough market. The story shows just how high the cost of housing is here, and how there is a desperate need for new ideas and bold policy moves to keep more people in their own homes.
It was September 2015 when a mother of one son, in tears, explained why she’d come to the shelter to find a new place to live.
“I don’t have a space
