How widespread are the homeless/mental health/addiction issues in your city/province?

[lio45]

Doesn't look that much worse than what I was used to while I was in the area (three years ago now).

The BT/AT contrast ("Before Trudeau" / "After Trudeau") is actually MUCH greater in smaller Quebec cities and in Montreal, than in Vancouver which always had large hordes of homeless.

[Loco101]

Originally Posted by lio45

Doesn't look that much worse than what I was used to while I was in the area (three years ago now).

The BT/AT contrast ("Before Trudeau" / "After Trudeau") is actually MUCH greater in smaller Quebec cities and in Montreal, than in Vancouver which always had large hordes of homeless.

I also look at provincial governments as well. The Ford and Legault governemnts haven't been doing anything to stop it from getting worse. But there has been a definite lack of leadership from Trudeau which really bothers me.

I don't ever remember seeing drug addicts and homeless in Quebec outside Montreal and Indigenous communities until recently. I was shocked to see white homeless addicts in downtown Val-d'Or. One place where I have yet to see any on the streets is Rouyn-Noranda.

[Acajack]

Spent Saturday night in east end Ottawa.

Beyond the usual Sodom and Gomorrah show on King Edward when you come off the bridge from Gatineau, for those who know the city there are now tents east of there in grassy areas along St Patrick St and also in wooded stretches near Vanier Parkway.

Not tons mind you but these are areas that had zero tents for the past 50 years or more.

I'll spare you the other behavioural anomalies I witnessed on my 5-minute drive through there. And there were a few.

[harls]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Spent Saturday night in east end Ottawa.

Beyond the usual Sodom and Gomorrah show on King Edward when you come off the bridge from Gatineau, for those who know the city there are now tents east of there in grassy areas along St Patrick St and also in wooded stretches near Vanier Parkway.

Not tons mind you but these are areas that had zero tents for the past 50 years or more.

I'll spare you the other behavioural anomalies I witnessed on my 5-minute drive through there. And there were a few.

On Sunday I drove by the tent city at Allumettières and A-50. It is no longer hidden in the trees along the creek. Tents are right along the boulevard now.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by harls

On Sunday I drove by the tent city at Allumettières and A-50. It is no longer hidden in the trees along the creek. Tents are right along the boulevard now.

Weird, I was in Gatineau for a month last year and walked passed this area a few times to get to the mall. Never noticed any tents. Surprising how rapidly things are escalating.

Tent cities along highway off-ramps here in the Lower Mainland are becoming increasingly common. Some of them appear to have a few dozen people in them. This was something that I used to commonly see in the USA but has now spread here with a vengeance. Thank goodness the Liberals fixed poverty, I'd hate to imagine how bad things would be if they hadn't.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by theman23

Weird, I was in Gatineau for a month last year and walked passed this area a few times to get to the mall. Never noticed any tents. Surprising how rapidly things are escalating.

Yes, there has recently been an escalation in Gatineau and Ottawa even from mid-summer this year.

The spread of tents eastward from King Edward was not something I had ever noticed prior to last weekend.

And at least some tents in the vicinity of Allumettières and the A-50 have been there for a couple of years now. But as harls said they were almost completely hidden by the trees and you really had to look for them. Now they've spread beyond the forest area and really stand out.

For those who can read French, here is a recent article from Radio-Canada about the growing proximity issues between the homeless camps and a high school which is very, very close to them.

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2012960/itinerance-cohabitation-ecole-outaouais

A few years ago, a homeless person assaulted a female high school student on one of the paths in the area. This freaked out a lot of people but most everyone agreed it was a very isolated incident. The situation has worsened a lot since then though no new attacks have occurred AFAIK.

[harls]

Originally Posted by theman23

Weird, I was in Gatineau for a month last year and walked passed this area a few times to get to the mall. Never noticed any tents. Surprising how rapidly things are escalating.

This was on Oct 1 around 6 pm.



I don't remember seeing this a month ago either..


Edit - Google Streetview has a shot in August and the tents are there. The road was under construction and just opened up recently.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by harls

This was on Oct 1 around 6 pm.



I don't remember seeing this a month ago either..


Edit - Google Streetview has a shot in August and the tents are there. The road was under construction and just opened up recently.

Ah. In fairness, it looks like those tents were there last year but were obscured by boarded-up houses (which have now been demolished for what looks to be a bus and bike lane). Weren't there in 2015 though.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by theman23

Ah. In fairness, it looks like those tents were there last year but were obscured by boarded-up houses (which have now been demolished for what looks to be a bus and bike lane). Weren't there in 2015 though.

Well thank god some virtue signalling bureaucrats have demolished housing for a bike lane. I’m sure those in tents will benefit greatly from that.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Well thank god some virtue signalling bureaucrats have demolished housing for a bike lane. I’m sure those in tents will benefit greatly from that.

In fairness those houses really were beyond repair. And there will be lots of new housing going up in that area eventually. Hopefully much of it affordable.

[kool maudit]

This whole thing is strange. Obviously, there is a significant housing issue across much of the Western world that is seeing prices for even modest properties head into the stratosphere. But in Toronto at least, where I saw this discussion play out in person, the discussion around the specific issue of public encampments is so vague and disempowered. Listening to people, you would think that only some theoretical future society with huge structural advances could ever solve this.

And yet, the situation in many places is the same as it has always been. Nobody sleeps in tents in Munich's Hofgarten. Nobody camps in Copenhagen's Orstedparken. Nobody sets up bonfires in Madrid's El Retiro.

I think people have become overly sensitive to the social tech that has always been used to prevent such situations. It is like an autoimmune disorder.

If you set up a tent in Stockholm Mariatorget, the police will come ask you to leave. If you refuse, they will push you. If you resist, they will hit you and confine you.

Obviously, one can then ask where they will go, where can they go, why are they in such dire straits? Obviously, one looks to lessen poverty and dismay. But in terms of having large cities whose squares and gardens do not feature shantytowns, that's how it's done. That's how it was done in Halifax's Grand Parade until very recently. That's how it's done in the Bois de Boulogne. It was probably done like that in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It is as though Canadians and Americans have suddenly become better than all that without actually knowing how to do it any better than that.

[niwell]

I can't speak for other cities but in Toronto encampments have generally been a feature of parks that traditionally have always had a significant homeless presence. Allen Gardens being the big one. Tents never last more than a week (usually less) when they pop up in High Park and Trinity Bellwoods now has some pretty heavy-handed security.

But I think there's a couple factors in play here. While there were small pockets of tents prior to 2020 (usually not in parks though) this is really a post-COVID thing, or rather something that happened during the pandemic and people sort of assumed it's the new norm once we emerged. Like with other things there's sort of a collective amnesia of what it was like before - "did we always have tents in parks? I guess they've been around awhile?". Once things become a semi-permanent feature of the landscape it becomes much harder to remove.

This is also fundamentally a new problem. The people in encampments aren't really the stereotypical homeless "on the street" type you used to see, but rather largely people who used to live in rooming houses and other SROs (or at least they start that way, then usually go downhill). Problem is, we don't have those anymore. They are physically dwindling in number as landlords convert them into more expensive units, and it's generally illegal to build new ones (a proposed bylaw to allow it was shut down) - though given market conditions I don't know why anyone would want to.

On top of this you have the type of activist that gets so convoluted in praxis the end message becomes "actually this is good, and we need to maintain it". Obviously they wouldn't say it like that, but it's the result of missing the second part of: "this is bad, and we need to come up with a viable solution". As with many things today you end up with two camps where one demands encampments are untouched and the other just wants them cleared and who cares what happens after. Neither are particularly useful and we're long past the point of simply clearing encampments and calling it a day, as they'll show up next week somewhere else (slum clearance 101, basically).

I'm not sure what the solution is other than fast-tracking new affordable housing and focusing on rehabilitation. I'm always a bit wary of the latter as a lot of these people were taking their ODSP / various other monies and drinking it away in their rooming house where nobody really noticed.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by niwell

I can't speak for other cities but in Toronto encampments have generally been a feature of parks that traditionally have always had a significant homeless presence.

The change in scale is enough to be a change in type, though, and this phenomenon isn't even most intense in Toronto, it's just where I happened to see it. Visiting in 2019 and then in 2023 from a foreign continent really left the impression of a state change.

Of course, Allan Gardens and Moss Park were always kind of needle parks, and there have been occasional attempts at encampments around the Gardiner for a long time (you can see some in this 2001 documentary). But the erecting of tents and the allowing of overnight stays is really a drastic change. It is essentially a re-zoning of public space into what was once called a rookery*. It's capitulation.

So while I understand the pressures coming from housing, stretched public services and all the rest, I don't understand what happened over the past few years in North America that didn't happen elsewhere, where park usage policy remains essentially where it was in Canada pre-pandemic.





* Were we more honest about where we are economically, I think we would permit a lot of housing types favouring transience, poverty and centralization that we currently don't. There were a lot of things we legislated out of existence in our postwar prosperity, from cold-water flats to flophouses. And if Toronto is to have rookeries, whether it wants to or not, perhaps we can then discuss whether their proper location is in the public gardens.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

I don't understand what happened over the past few years in North America that didn't happen elsewhere, where park usage policy remains essentially where it was in Canada pre-pandemic.

There's a reason why Toronto and Vancouver have the worse homeless issues in the country. They're the two most expensive cities to rent and buy in ($2800-$3000 for a one bedroom these days).

There used to be this pattern where people who would rent would then buy their first apartment, and then after having their first child, would buy their first house, freeing up rentals and small apartments for the next generation.

This system is now completely broken.

The first time renters out of university are now completing for apartments with older renters (who can't afford to buy......anything). The condo owners can't upgrade to a house, so they stay put in their condo. Many of the houses that are sold get purchased by companies like the Ontario Pension Plan and investment groups (who then rent or AirBnB the property). Add to that, huge yearly population increases, lots of temporary foreign workers helping to keep our economy from flatlining and hundreds of thousands of out-of-country students, and you have no place for someone truly down on their luck. There's nothing left for them. It's the street or the grave.

What you're seeing is a country's abject failure to house its residents.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

The change in scale is enough to be a change in type, though, and this phenomenon isn't even most intense in Toronto, it's just where I happened to see it. Visiting in 2019 and then in 2023 from a foreign continent really left the impression of a state change.

On the west end, pre-COVID Alexandria Park and TrinBell used to be where a few tents congregated. Now it has spread to parks of Grange Park (including the back entrance to the AGO), Garrison etc. Clarence Square looks like a mini Allen Gardens, and the dog park there is deserted due to many scuffles. 129 Peter's congregation is multiplying again after a bunch of them got shipped off to a church.

For the parks that are still immune to tents, i.e. David Pecaut, Victoria Square, St Andrews, Toronto Music Garden, Coronation Park, it's still a mystery why these ones are spared for now.

But the erecting of tents and the allowing of overnight stays is really a drastic change. It is essentially a re-zoning of public space into what was once called a rookery*. It's capitulation.

So while I understand the pressures coming from housing, stretched public services and all the rest, I don't understand what happened over the past few years in North America that didn't happen elsewhere, where park usage policy remains essentially where it was in Canada pre-pandemic.

Aside from overzealous activists, the police are also very wary to get involved after BLM. They don't want to attract any bad publicity. Unless absolutely necessary and by order of the city, they will just ignore the tents.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

The change in scale is enough to be a change in type, though, and this phenomenon isn't even most intense in Toronto, it's just where I happened to see it. Visiting in 2019 and then in 2023 from a foreign continent really left the impression of a state change.

Perhaps I shouldn't have led off with the bit about Allan Gardens as I agree it's absolutely a massive state change. The history of those parks certainly helps explain why people may have been ambivalent until they became large though.

But yeah, I think in the future we are going to have to completely rethink certain housing typologies. We look down upon countries with real slums and informal settlements but some of the encampments are becoming just that. Except instead of on vacant lots or the urban periphery they're downtown and municipalities aren't running services after they've been there a while. It was interesting cycling through Tempelhof Field in Berlin and seeing the massive refugee camp there - something I feel like wouldn't fly here.

FWIW we now have small encampments on the periphery of parks in Napanee and some quite large ones in Belleville - places that have had poverty but also used to have cheap housing.

[kool maudit]

Originally Posted by P'tit Renard

after BLM.

Right! That's something that didn't hit over here.

[Harrison]

Regarding clearing encampments on public land, this court decision from Kitchener earlier this year likely has set a precedent that will make it much more difficult to force encampments off of public land, such as parks.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

This whole thing is strange. Obviously, there is a significant housing issue across much of the Western world that is seeing prices for even modest properties head into the stratosphere. But in Toronto at least, where I saw this discussion play out in person, the discussion around the specific issue of public encampments is so vague and disempowered. Listening to people, you would think that only some theoretical future society with huge structural advances could ever solve this.

And yet, the situation in many places is the same as it has always been. Nobody sleeps in tents in Munich's Hofgarten. Nobody camps in Copenhagen's Orstedparken. Nobody sets up bonfires in Madrid's El Retiro.

I think people have become overly sensitive to the social tech that has always been used to prevent such situations. It is like an autoimmune disorder.

If you set up a tent in Stockholm Mariatorget, the police will come ask you to leave. If you refuse, they will push you. If you resist, they will hit you and confine you.

Obviously, one can then ask where they will go, where can they go, why are they in such dire straits? Obviously, one looks to lessen poverty and dismay. But in terms of having large cities whose squares and gardens do not feature shantytowns, that's how it's done. That's how it was done in Halifax's Grand Parade until very recently. That's how it's done in the Bois de Boulogne. It was probably done like that in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

It is as though Canadians and Americans have suddenly become better than all that without actually knowing how to do it any better than that.

After reading this, I thought to myself that it's really hard to believe that our situation in Canada is that much worse on every single front (housing, support services, the state of the economy, economic disparities, drug use, etc.) which combined would fully justify why we have these problems and other places don't.

It's often said that the insularity of the US is one of the reasons they just can't get past certain long-standing issues that most other countries seem to have resolved.

Could it be that this is yet another case where we're more like them than we think, and that this is a main cause of our sclerotic inability to tackle stuff like this?

Because I really don't see any lasting solutions coming to the fore for this. The responses are more reactive and seem to take for granted that we will always have large numbers of junkies living on the streets, so we need to find ways to deal with this "reality" (sic).

Not much thought is given to actually reducing the number of junkies at the source point, i.e. where they actually start down the path to becoming junkies.

As I was saying to Truenorth the other day, I think this might be a cultural rut that we've become stuck in.


Pis des pauvres... y'en aura toujours! - Elvis Gratton

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Right! That's something that didn't hit over here.

Nor do I think that fentanyl has really hit Europe. It is the zombie apocalypse.