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In 2017 I put out this album called Audible Songs From Rockwood based on the case files of people incarcerated at the Rockwood Asylum for the criminally insane in Kingston during the 1850's. I want to tell you how what I'm seeing in Toronto today parallels 1850's upper Canada.
I work with @ESN_TO and right now we deliver water and gatorade, tents and other stuff to 5 of the 60 encampments in toronto which are huge every morning. The city is not providing humanitarian aid to ppl so they're living w/out running water & basic health care. It's harsh.
The city councillors will not visit the encampments, and say they do not want to entrench encampments in the city. Yes, even the "progressives". Instead they say they are investing in "housing" solutions. These solutions mostly come in the form of shelter hotels.
What is a hotel shelter? It is a building that used to be a hotel but now is run by an agency. To be clear, the city calls them hotels, but they are hotel shelters. These hotel shelters are not standardized - the different agencies that run them have different ways of doing so.
For instance, some have curfews, some don't, some allow you to visit your friends in other rooms, some don't, some have locks on the doors, some don't, some have competency in harm reduction, some don't. We know of 2 people who have died in the shelter hotels from OD.
When the city wants to clear an encampment they send in an agency called Streets To Homes (S2H). S2H is doing their best to find "housing" but because there is no affordable housing in Toronto, they just send people to shelter hotels.
Often S2H hasn't engaged with the encampment residents till the day of the move, so even though their staff are well meaning, they don't have the relationships required to really engage folks in making decisions about where to live.
So we see people just waking up one day to the possibility of four walls around them, and they hop on a city bus that drives them to the outskirts of town - 401 & Kennedy, places far from the downtown core. The most central one is Roehampton & Yonge.
These shelter hotels work for some people, but not others. City has no stats. Last week one ESN group saw 11 people moved & within the week 4 of them were back at an encampment. This week we are watching a big "relocation" @ Lamport stadium, and we will see how many people return
When people return to their tents, they tell us stories of why they chose a tent rather than stay at the shelter hotel, & there i find the parallels with the Rockwood research. People are beautiful, complex & have different needs. The system already can't provide for difference.
Part of the main conclusion I drew from studying Rockwood was that it was this catch all institution for ppl who could not conform to the social order of society. So that was people w/ epilepsy, people who could not work jobs due to illness or disability, people with difference
It was also people who did sex work, people who used substances, people who were impacted emotionally by patriarchal structures, migration, and as a result could not integrate into society. Honestly, I wrote 30 pages of liner notes to explain that.
In the encampments, thats who I meet. Ppl who tell me they have brain injuries which impede them from working, ppl who are very aware of their own experiences of trauma, people who have no generational wealth to fall back on, ppl who use drugs.
As many stories as ppl. These aren't my stories to tell, but I can tell you that the story of the city right now is similar to 1850's Upper Canadian administration that decided to warehouse everyone who didn't conform to the social order. That's the purpose of hotel shelters
I have been particularly astounded by the fact that when you ship people out to Scarborough or Markham, they no longer are the constituents of the city councillors responsible for the decision ( @joe_cressy @anabailaoTO @kristynwongtam @m_layton )
Many encampment residents have long relationships to the neighborhood in which they camp, have become homeless within those neighborhoods. their families and services are there. It is disenfranchisement. City councillors wash their hands of ppl. Out of site out of mind.
What are the solutions? I think active engagement with people to figure out what kind of housing would work for them is important. Recognizing that a one size fits all solution is not going to work is important. Soft institutionalization is not ok.
Because honestly, we're seeing a lot of people returning, and the money that's being spent on shelter hotels could be better spent giving people rent subsidies, expropriating buildings in downtown neighborhoods, creating permanent housing solutions downtown.
I was born in a city that kicks out & displaces. This is a settler colonial modality.
For the ppl who stay in the shelter hotels, what does life look like? We will keep asking and reporting on that with ppl's permission.
For the ppl who stay in the shelter hotels, what does life look like? We will keep asking and reporting on that with ppl's permission.
But anyway, I have been weary to speak out about the parallels, cuz I have firm policy of not using politics to sell my music. I just felt some of you who liked that album liked reading really long things, and might be interested to know what's happening here.
Follow @ESN_TO
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