Good Morning Gentle Readers
People are planning a memorial outside the
Mayor's downtown luxury condo.
Andrea Huston
At the same
time as Toronto councillors were debating a budget that many are
calling harmful to the cities most vulnerable, a homeless man died of a drug
overdose soon after leaving a downtown shelter that was over capacity.
A memorial is planned for today, February 19, outside Mayor John Tory’s condo
building at 1 Bedford at Bloor Street, just outside St.
George Station from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The 28-year-old homeless Indigenous man went to St Felix Centre,
one of the two 24-hour warming centres, at around 6 p.m. February 15, Toronto Street nurse and homeless
advocate Cathy Crowe told Torontoist.
“They
were full, but invited him in for food. They offered to put him on the waiting
list or send him to St. Lawrence Community Centre warming centre. That’s the
one I call the ‘secret warming centre’ because doors are locked all night. It’s
not advertised, or on the City website. I’ve been fighting with the City all
winter on it,” Crowe says.
City News reports that the shelter was 10 people
over capacity when the man arrived. He was offered a referral to
another location, but declined.
After
being turned away, the man suffered a fatal overdose in a nearby
restaurant washroom. Police confirmed that the heroin the man had
consumed was believed to be laced with the drug fentanyl, which has been
connected to a surge of deaths among intravenous drug users.
“It is time for us to wake up to the fact that people are dying on
our streets from overdoses and a lack of sufficient housing,” Councillor Joe
Cressy told City News. “It shows our shelter system is over capacity today and we are really
struggling.”
Cressy’s motion to save front-line shelter staff failed. City
Council passed the 2017 budget, but not before accidentally unbalancing it. and voting to make up the shortfall
with reserves.
Some
councillors were quick to point out that $2 million was easily
found to patch a hole of Council’s own creation (as a result of a
last-minute vote to preserve street sweeping services), but not half as much to
maintain service levels at homeless shelters across the city.
A spokesperson from the mayor’s office described the recent death as
a “tragic circumstance” and told the Star that Mayor Tory has been “very vocal about the
dangers of fentanyl” and is working to reduce the impact of the deadly drug.
“City
staffs are investigating, and we will be asking for a full report once all the
facts are known,” the spokesperson said.
Parkdale-High Park Councillor Gord Perks is calling the 2017
budget the most unfair he’s ever seen. “We’re literally taking money away
from the poorest to keep property taxes low for people who are wealthy,” Perks
told Now Magazine. “It’s reverse Robin
Hood.”
Some of the
comments on this news story
The large warm and cozy food court at College Park is accessible
24-hours yet homeless people are barred from sitting there. They should be
forced to allow people to seek shelter there during bouts of extreme
temperatures.
F#*k shelters. Build housing
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