Open Letter to the Ontario Government and Doug Ford

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To: Premier Doug Ford

 Happy Solstice.

For much of the year, there's complaints about the homeless. Building shelters in parks, in alleys, out in the woods. And steps are taken to evict them, tear down their shelters, and get rid of them.  The thing is, everyone knows that isn't a solution. It's kicking the can down the street, and hoping you don't ever have to actually deal with it.

All that's costing is human lives. You can't fix the homeless problem by tearing down shelters, all that does is cause human misery and death. Homeless shelters can't really deal with people who have mental illnesses. ODSP doesn't give enough to cover rent (and food, and bills).

I've been to a homeless camp in the middle of the woods, in winter. I saw tents, I saw tarps. I saw people starving. They go out and beg and go to places where they can get food, then rush back and eat in their tent before shivering through the night.

That's no way for a person to live, but it would be so much worse if they didn't have that shelter.

Honestly, the only thing I can think of for a solution, is to give them actual shelters, places they can hole up in during the night, or just let them make their tents.

Is it an eyesore?

Of course it is. But that's not their problem. That's the province's problem.

ODSP and Social Assistance needs to meet the needs of the people who depend on it. It needs to be at a level where the people on it are not destitute. They shouldn't need to bundle six people in a 4-bedroom just to make rent and food. They shouldn't need to decide between food, and bills each month. The bare minimum that someone on disability should get is above the poverty line.

Because many of these people are incapable of working. That's why they're on disability. They can't do gig work, they can't do part time. They are unable to sustain themselves. And it's these people who wind up homeless. They can't find a place to live, because they can't afford rent. If they somehow do find a place that'll take them, they're not able to afford food.

Example? My rent's over $1400 a month. I'm getting groceries for two people. The both of us are diabetic, so the food bank is out of the question. My partner has ADHD and can't hold down a job -- they can barely function in the day to handle the obligations they have. I have Autism and DID, and was marked 'unemployable' by the leading expert on DID in Canada. We're one bad month away from being homeless.

 And then what? No place to live. No shelter that can handle us. 10 year waiting list for affordable housing. And our suffering? That's the province's problem to deal with. Getting the police to push us around and make sure we're not safe and warm is not the solution.

 If you're unwilling to increase ODSP and SA to something that allows people to actually survive, then at least get some shelters built. There's multiple groups in Ontario more than willing to craft them. Small cubicles that people can crawl into at night and keep warm.

Or hell, Japan's got coffin hotels that you could live in, with a rent of $700 US a month. Get those kind of places built, it gives someone a place to live, food, the chance to bathe, to use the facility computers, and look for work if they're capable of it.

Don't blame the homeless for being homeless. Do something to fix it. Medicine Hat did it and the program's still mostly working. Why can't Ontario do something on a larger scale?

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