How Chronic Homelessness in the City of Toronto is a Failure in Canada’s Implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
By Joe Prachatree/Shutterstock.com
Par Joe Prachatree/Shutterstock.com
Landon Apollo Leone
(FR) Cet article se concentre sur le sans-abrisme chronique dans la ville de Toronto et la Région du Grand Toronto (RGT) en ce qui concerne le développement durable et la résistance aux paliers municipaux et provinciaux du gouvernement canadien, ainsi que l’engagement du pays aux Objectifs de développement durable des Nations Unies au niveau fédéral. Une étude de cas du sans-abrisme chronique à Toronto comme un problème persistant sera également examinée dans le contexte de la pandémie actuelle de la Covid-19. En raison du manque de refuges pour sans-abri disponibles et de logements sociaux abordables dans la RGT, aggravé par la fermeture des refuges due à la propagation du virus, le sans-abrisme chronique est oublié alors que ceux affectés requièrent plus d’aide que jamais. Ainsi, le sans-abrisme chronique dans la ville de Toronto et la RGT est un échec du système de gouvernance du Canada à plusieurs niveaux, concernant la mise en œuvre des Objectifs de développement durable des Nations Unies. Cet article présente plusieurs hypothèses de relations cause-à-effet qui pourraient expliquer ce phénomène dans l’effort de répondre aux questions suivantes : pourquoi le sans-abrisme à Toronto et dans le RGT est-il chronique ? ; en quoi est-ce cette situation inacceptable selon le cadre des Objectifs de développement durable ? ; et si le système de gouvernance à plusieurs niveaux du Canada fait obstacle à la résolution de ce grave problème.
This essay focuses on chronic homelessness in the City of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area as it pertains to sustainable development and resiliency at the municipal and provincial levels of government in Canada, as well as to the country’s commitment to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals at the federal level. A case study of homelessness in Toronto as a persistent issue will also be looked at in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Due to a lack of available homeless shelters and low-income public housing in the Greater Toronto Area, further exacerbated by the closures of shelters due to the ongoing viral spread, chronic homelessness is being forgotten about at a time when those affected require assistance most urgently. Therefore, chronic homelessness in the City of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area is a failure of Canada’s multilevel system of governance regarding the implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
This essay posits multiple causal relationships. The first sees urban economic, income, or wealth inequality as the independent variable which affects chronic urban homelessness, the dependent variable, in a positive way. The more severe the inequality is, the more prevalent homelessness is within the city. The second is that chronic homelessness, as an independent variable, directly affects public health, as a dependent variable, in a negative way. This means that the more widespread urban homelessness is, more negative effects on public health follow as a result. Another causal relationship examined is that between chronic homelessness, the dependent variable, and Canada’s implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) as the independent variable. As the SDG’s are achieved further, urban chronic homelessness will decline as a result, signifying a negative relationship. The final causal relationship identified and discussed is between green gentrification as the independent variable, and chronic homelessness as the dependent variable. This relationship exhibits a positive causality, for as eco-gentrification increases in popularity, homelessness follows suit.
Research questions include: why is homelessness in Toronto and the GTA chronic, why is this specific issue unacceptable according to the Sustainable Development Goals framework, and whether Canada’s multilevel system of governance is getting in the way of solving the homelessness issue. The specific area of focus is chronic homelessness in the City of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area vis-à-vis sustainable development, urban resiliency, and the current COVID-19 pandemic situation. To begin with, this essay will discuss how chronic homelessness came to be an issue in Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area, why it continues to persist despite attempts to mitigate it, and how academic scholarship agrees that it can finally be combatted effectively. Next, it will shed light onto research linking the relationship between chronic urban homelessness and urban public health, as well as how these issue-areas relate to Canada’s implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Finally, multiple responses to the growing crisis that is chronic urban homelessness as a public health issue, including grassroots and government policy initiatives, are highlighted.
Contributing Factors to Chronic Urban Homelessness
Chronic homelessness in Canadian cities is a severe cancer to the health of the urban environment. David Harvey (2000) highlights multiple diagnoses of urban poverty, including service jobs that continuously replace former manufacturing ones. According to Harvey, these are low-paying, non-unionized, precarious positions which offer few if any benefits (Harvey, 2000). Zuberi (2010) explains urban homelessness as based on extreme wealth disparity, comparing and contrasting neighbourhoods such as Rosedale and Regent Park within Toronto. Furthermore, Harvey argues that as the federal government decentralizes further, provincial governments dominated by rural and suburban interests will continue to turn their backs on cities (Harvey, 2000). However, there is hope for remedying this situation, as academics like Richard Florida (2018) are calling for an increase in municipal policy-making power by devolving legislative influence from nation-states to cities to make urbanism more inclusive and democratic.
Another contributing factor to chronic homelessness in the City of Toronto and other large cities which cannot be overlooked is mental illness. Ferreira (2020) notes how the homeless population has a higher prevalence of mental illness among them than the general urban population. An important aspect of chronic homelessness is the social isolation that these individuals face. This social isolation often exacerbates already prevalent mental illnesses, creating a less than ideal mental state where steady employment cannot be maintained and societal interaction can feel next to impossible.
Melissa Checker (2011) writes about environmental gentrification which has contributed to the eviction of many individuals from low-income housing units as they “go green” to attract wealthier clientele. This has happened in Parkdale, Toronto for example, as outlined by Jessica Parish (2020). Wolch et. al. (2014) concur that while the creation of new green spaces to address environmental justice problems can make neighbourhoods healthier and more aesthetically attractive, they can also increase housing costs and property values. This often leads to eco-gentrification and a displacement of the very residents which the green space strategies were designed to benefit. To combat this inevitability, urban planners, designers, and ecologists should focus on urban green space strategies that are “just green enough” and that explicitly protect social as well as ecological sustainability (Wolch et. al. 2014). Ultimately, more inclusive urban planning must involve those who are directly affected by such policies, affording them the chance to participate openly in the policy-making process (Bratt & Reardon, 2013). Therefore, since homelessness and a lack of adequate shelter is a resiliency issue in Toronto, homeless and low-income individuals must be directly involved in any policy-making process and development project which will affect them.
Chronic urban homelessness ultimately exists because of urban inequality, an issue-area that has been back on the global political agenda throughout the second decade of the twenty-first century. Ghosh (2016) contends that unchecked inequality – whether it be economic, political, social, cultural, environmental, spatial, or knowledge-based – jeopardizes the sustainability of economies, societies, and communities. He further posits that, although the world has seen a five-fold increase in studies of inequality and social justice in academic publications since 1992, too many countries are investing too little in researching the long-term impact of inequality. An increase in economic inequality, for example, originated in the 1980’s and 1990’s when the neoliberal paradigm became dominant in both Western ideological thinking and policy action (Ghosh, 2016). Ghosh (2016) further describes neoliberalism as a “trickle down” system wherein it is assumed that the wealth generated by market forces would ultimately flow down to marginalized populations. Unfortunately, this notion was not realized on a large scale. While several countries – both developed and emerging – recorded high rates of economic growth following the liberalization of their economies, inequality – and especially income inequality – increased rapidly within those countries (Ghosh, 2016).
Zuberi (2010) elaborates on how the rise of neoliberalism, in both developed and emerging countries and their major cities, has subsequently led to cuts to social welfare programs. While saving tax-payer dollars, these cuts have devastated the “increasing numbers of the financially worst-off Canadians living in shelters or on the street” (Zuberi, 2010, p. 117). As a result of globalization, inequalities are typically distributed unevenly between regions, and between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. Based on income inequality statistics, Toronto is the most unequal city in Canada, where “walking down a major urban shopping street means walking past BMW’s and Gucci boutiques as well as people sleeping on the sidewalk” (Zuberi, 2010, p. 111). Ultimately, inequality affects every urban citizen while reducing the efficiency of efforts to meet other priorities. However, through proactive government initiatives such as wealth distribution programs and a minimum basic income, urban economic inequality in particular can be effectively mitigated over the long term. Clearly, urban economic, income, or wealth inequality is an independent variable which affects chronic urban homelessness, the dependent variable, in a positive way. The more severe the inequality is, the more prevalent homelessness is within the urban environment.
Chronic Homelessness as a Public Health Issue
The American Public Health Association (2017) classifies homelessness as a public health issue because “those experiencing homelessness have high rates of chronic mental and physical health conditions, co-occurring disorders, and barriers to care, such as an inability to access care when needed or comply with prescribed medications.” Keil and Ali (2007) demonstrate how urban public health evokes contrasting images: one of the city as a center of disease, poor health, and enduring poverty; the other of the city as the epicenter of public health intervention, innovative medical cures, and healthy lifestyles for the well-off. Furthermore, they chronicle urban governance in the City of Toronto at the time of the SARS outbreak in 2003. Keil and Ali (2007) contend that the municipal governance response led to “forgotten” policy areas such as food, homelessness, the environment, and public health. Unfortunately, as has been documented regarding the ongoing COVID-19 viral pandemic, this trend appears to be continuing. Already, 14 of the 75 shelters in Toronto have reported outbreaks of the virus, with two COVID-related deaths confirmed as members of the city’s homeless community (Adelitala, 2020). According to Ferreira (2020), the infection rate in shelters is around 35 times higher than in the general urban population, with over 6% of Toronto’s homeless population living in the city’s shelter system testing positive compared to only 0.18% of the general population. The inability to self-isolate in Toronto’s homeless shelter system, coupled with a lack of hygiene and the compromised immune systems prevalent throughout the homeless urban community, results in susceptibility to viral spread during a pandemic. This of course led to most shelters closing down, forcing their members back onto the street where self-isolation is next to impossible.
Ferreira (2020) explains how the risk of transmitting and contracting COVID-19 increases within Toronto homeless shelters as a result of their characteristic communal setting. Furthermore, the two-meter mandatory separation now enforced at all of the city’s shelters comes at the expense of social and physical contact with others, creating barriers to essential contact that is necessary in the maintenance of mental health. Not only is adequate access to mental health services a challenge for homeless populations across the country, so is access to physical health-care services. People who are homeless are less likely to be able to access consistent preventative care. Many individuals within the homeless system have a number of pre-existing health conditions, including lung diseases, heart disease, and diabetes, leading to increased risk of developing and spreading severe and even life-threatening cases of COVID-19 (Ferreira, 2020). Unfortunately, as Ferreira (2020) posits, many homeless individuals are wary of discriminatory behaviour within medical institutions. Oftentimes, they don’t feel confident that they're going to be treated with dignity, or that they're going to be given suitable medical options. The fact of an individual’s homelessness ultimately dictates their access to and quality of health services, emphasized again within the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ultimately, the best protection from COVID-19 is a home, yet up to 235,000 Canadians circle through homeless shelters each year. This means that on any given night, as many as 35,000 people are in a shelter across the country, many in the Greater Toronto Area and southern Ontario (Ferreira, 2020). Clearly, there exists a strong causal relationship between chronic homelessness, as an independent variable, directly affecting public health, as a dependent variable, in a negative way. This means that the more widespread the urban homelessness is, more negative effects on public health follow as a result.
How Chronic Homelessness Relates to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals
Mans Nilsson et. al. (2017) outline the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, the vision of which is to create a world where people are productively employed, free of poverty and hunger, and able to access to universal health coverage and education, among other objectives, by 2030. This set of 17 initiatives are adopted by all 178 United Nation’s countries including Canada (Nilsson et. al. 2017). One of the main pillars of the Sustainable Development Goals is partnering with local and national governments to ensure that these goals are realized within their borders. The specific issue-area of chronic urban homelessness in the City of Toronto and the GTA as a public health issue falls under the following Sustainable Development Goals: goal one being to end poverty in all of its forms everywhere by 2030; goal two being to end hunger, achieve food security, and achieve improved nutrition for all by 2030; goal three being to ensure healthy lives and to promote well-being across all ages; goal ten being to reduce inequality within and among countries; goal eleven being to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable; and finally goal sixteen being to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels of government and society (Nilsson et. al. 2017). Clearly, homelessness is a failure in the implementation of multiple Sustainable Development Goals in Canada, one that must be remedied as soon as possible. The causal relationship examined between chronic homelessness as the dependent variable and Canada’s implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals as the independent variable shows that as the SDG’s are achieved further, urban chronic homelessness should decline as a result, signifying a negative relationship of causality.
Current Anti-Homelessness Initiatives and Their Limits
Homeless shelters across the Greater Toronto Area do what they can to mitigate chronic urban homelessness despite a lack of funding and a shelter system near capacity. The Out of the Cold Project, for example, is a Canada-wide Non-Governmental Organization founded in 1988 as an “umbrella organization to provide financial support for Out of the Cold projects” in many major urban areas across the country (Out of the Cold, n.d.). A volunteer-based organization, Out of the Cold partner locations provide the “basic physical needs of shelter, food, and warm clothing for the less fortunate members of our society – as well as responding to the deeply human needs of compassion, dignity and self-worth” (Out of the Cold, n.d.). Similarly, Sanctuary Ministries Toronto was founded in 1992 as a Toronto-based organization that works with poor and homeless people to provide them with support in reintegrating into the community. Kerr (2018) explains how Sanctuary believes that without belonging to a healthy community, people receive little benefit from drug rehab, housing, or employment programs. Staff are available on-site to help people access welfare, housing, legal aid, counselling, and therapy or drug rehabilitation (Kerr, 2018). Community members are either homeless, precariously housed, couch-surf, or live in subsidized housing. Sanctuary Ministries Toronto believe that the most fundamental need of homeless individuals is something that most people take for granted: a meaningful place in a healthy community, and a sense of belonging (Sanctuary, n.d.). Sanctuary’s philosophy is therefore to seek out relationships with people who have been pushed to the margins of society, providing comfort and resources in the short term, and paving the way for a road out of chronic poverty in the long-term (Sanctuary, n.d.). This proves that closing shelters during an urban pandemic result in severe consequences regarding both the physical and mental health of homeless individuals.
Unfortunately, even the good work done by these homeless shelters is limited, especially during some of the most trying times for homeless individuals. The Out of the Cold shelter locations, for example, were forced to close at the outbreak of the pandemic when members tested positive for COVID-19 and the health and safety of both staff and other members was at risk. Sanctuary Ministries Toronto clients are still allowed to eat their meals inside the facility as well as take showers or use the restroom, however they can only stay for a total of 30 minutes, and only 10 clients are allowed inside at a time in a building with a capacity of over 200 (Ferreira, 2020). One of the main issues Sanctuary Ministries Toronto is facing right now is locating spots in local shelters for overflow homeless individuals, since every shelter – due to physical distancing guidelines mandated by the provincial government – only allow a fraction of capacity at each shelter each night (Ferreira, 2020). Yet Ferreira (2020) maintains that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is most felt in the shelter’s housing resettlement program, a crucial element of their outreach efforts. This program provides valuable, on-going support to former homeless people that have secured low-income housing.
Incompatibility and a lack of cooperation between different levels of government, coupled with provincial hegemony over municipal legislation, gives Toronto’s public health officials an excuse for the failure regarding Toronto’s homeless population. This is unacceptable and ultimately dangerous as the current COVID-19 pandemic has made the severity of homelessness as a public health issue increasingly evident. Individuals who have no form of permanent shelter cannot effectively quarantine, a clear and obvious issue during a pandemic situation where household quarantine promotion seems to be the most effective public health response regarding viral spread prevention. Public criticism of all three levels of government and public health authorities for their slow response in supporting the nation’s homeless has led to some successful funding initiatives. On the federal level, officials recently announced $157.5 million for assisting the general homeless population with physical distancing. Faced with mounting pressure, the City of Toronto launched a program aimed at relocating people from congregate living situations into hotel rooms and apartments that have been bought or leased for the duration of the pandemic, thereby increasing physical distancing measures (Ferreira, 2020). This proves that public grassroots activism can lead to both significant and effective policy initiatives. Social activism of this magnitude must continue in order to hold the municipal government accountable to all urban citizens within their jurisdiction, even members of often “forgotten” communities such as Toronto’s homeless.
Recommendations for Addressing Chronic Homelessness in the Future
Jeffrey Sachs (2012) explains sustainable development as a development strategy that manages all-natural resources, human resources, as well as financial and physical assets in the hopes of increasing long-term health, wealth, and well-being for a population. Both David Dollar (2004) and Paul Collier (2019) agree that the sustainable development issue of our time must be focussed on the “bottom billion,” which represents the people who are trapped in either under-developed, developing, or even developed countries but are not afforded the high standards of living attained by many in those societies. To David Dollar (2004), sustainable development must be about giving hope to ordinary people that their children will live in a society that has caught up with the rest of the world. Clearly, Toronto’s homeless population are members of this “bottom billion” club, meaning that chronic homelessness within the city is a sustainable development issue.
Lower level government and policy making that is both high functioning and publicly accessible that ensures accountability to all income-level citizens would address multiple rampant inequalities that characterize the sustainable development issue of the “bottom billion.” The disconnect between urban planning and public health in major Canadian cities must be solved through the multi-level governance system and by affording more policy-making control to municipal cities so that they may tackle distinctly urban problems at a governance level most directly responsible for urban residents. Keil and Ali (2007) argue for what they call “metropolitanization,” which they describe as an internal reconstitution of the political sphere and its articulation with civil society, reoriented towards this interaction at the urban level. They maintain that currently, provincial scale is extremely important in the Canadian multi-level governance system where municipalities are dependent on upper-level policy frameworks and financing without much autonomy for local agencies and institutions. Urban governance is both severely constricted and clearly defined by this multi-level configuration. In fact, Keil and Ali (2007) decide that the core dilemma faced by urban public health responses is the lack of policy-making and policy-enacting autonomy local agencies have. They lament that cities and their institutions are simply units of the administrative state – characterized by the provincial and federal governments – rather than political decision-makers on their own terms.
Ghosh (2016) explains how in order to quell first world urban inequality, effective and sustainable routes out of poverty for the working-age population, including fairly paid jobs supported by effective labour market institutions, must be prioritized. In supporting people to attain these jobs, equitable access to quality education is critical, and offers synergies with reduced social and knowledge inequalities. Another cause of urban inequality is eco-gentrification. Green spaces serve to bolster the public health of urban citizens, yet Wolch et. al. (2014) describe how eco-gentrification can contribute to chronic urban homeless by driving up rent prices in low-income housing areas (Wolch et. al. 2014). They argue for creating urban space that is “just green enough” to reap the public health benefits of improved access to urban green space while avoiding the “urban green space paradox” which is green gentrification leading to urban homelessness. Wolch et. al. (2014) admit that this “just green enough” idea must involve collaborations between local government, grassroots community groups, and a willingness of local stakeholders to contest both powerful real-estate interests and mainstream environmental advocates. Moreover, the active involvement of urban planners, designers, and ecologists is also essential to articulate strategies for urban green space that explicitly advance a combination of public health, environmental equity, and social justice within urban communities (Wolch et. al. 2014). To attain these lofty goals, bottom-up urban green space strategies must be supported by anti-gentrification policies. Such policies include the provision of affordable housing and housing trust funds, rent stabilization programs that can reduce absentee landlordism, and while financial incentives for homeownership and shared equity housing projects which allow existing residents to have a stake in an improving neighbourhood (Wolch et. al. 2014). Therefore, green gentrification as an independent variable has a positive affect on chronic homelessness as a dependent variable, for as eco-gentrification increases in prevalence, chronic homelessness follows suit.
In conclusion, the long term solution to chronic homelessness seems deceptively simple: get people off of the streets and into affordable housing. For all urban residents, the best protection from public health issues such as urban pandemics like COVID-19 is ensuring universal access to permanent residency. Still, up to 235,000 Canadians circle through homeless shelters each year (Ferreira, 2020). Therefore, any short-run urban resiliency plan, including the Canada-wide implementation of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, must be modeled after homeless shelters like the Out of the Cold Program, Sanctuary Ministries Toronto, and other anti-homelessness initiatives like them. Clearly, homelessness is a failure in executing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals in Canada, one that must be remedied quickly. Chronic urban homelessness within the City of Toronto shares a causal relationship with a number of urban and political factors, ranging from urban inequalities, to public health, to eco-gentrification. In identifying these causally-linked relationships, this essay has proposed issue-areas which must be mitigated if chronic urban homelessness is to be ceased. The wealthy mobilize their political and financial influence over urban municipal policy and effectively militarize the city in response to whatever causes they see fit (Zuberi, 2010). Academics must work tirelessly to afford this power to all members of the urban community. David Harvey (2000) explains how the people currently have no right to choose the kind of city they inhabit, despite the fact that as people produce their cities, they essentially produce themselves. If we are going to achieve the goal of mitigating inequality and reconnecting urban planning and public health to combat both chronic homelessness and the spread of disease, cities are the place to start.