homelessness in toronto:
Inequality has reached a level not seen in this country for about a century, as Osgoode Hall tax professor Neil Brooks has noted. The swollen ranks of homeless people — a throwback to the early days of capitalism before protest movements won social benefits — are a sharp reminder that this class war has many victims, including the weakest and most vulnerable.
(...) This appears to be the underlying motivation behind Toronto's “Streets to Homes” program, which is modelled on the Bush administration's program to end homelessness in U.S. cities.
(...) One clue that something is amiss is the fact that, at the same time that it's ostensibly working to end homelessness, the Bush administration has made deep cuts to federal housing and support programs that would be key to any successful transition from homelessness to housing.
(...) In reality, the much-vaunted success of cities like New York in eliminating homelessness is largely spin, according to Patrick Markee, an analyst with New York's Coalition for the Homeless. “This decade has been the worst since the Great Depression,” he told me.
(...) And it's been accompanied by cutbacks in shelter beds, making the immediate plight of the homeless even more precarious. A survey of more than 300 homeless people by the group Street Health found that 39 per cent tried but were unable to get access to a shelter bed at some point last winter.
(...) Indeed, Toronto's launch of its Streets to Homes program in February 2005 was coupled with punitive new rules that banned the homeless from sleeping in public squares, and halted programs that provided them with food and sleeping bags. The city has also become more aggressive in prosecuting panhandlers and loiterers.