Increasingly since the pandemic, in cities across the country, more and more people are choosing to live in a tent, often out of necessity, because they feel unsafe in overcrowded shelters, or they’re turned away because shelters are at capacity.
Encampments have become a regular fixture in parks and sometimes on city streets, as more and more people face rapidly increasing rents and fewer and fewer options.
According to Cathy Crowe, a longtime street nurse working with unhoused populations, one major factor in the housing shortage was a program the federal government cancelled in 1993. Canada had funded 20,000 new units of social housing each year up to that point — but since the program was cut, Crowe says the country has seen a 30-year deficit of new affordable housing, which has resulted in chronically long waitlists to access housing.
She’s seen the toll of this crisis firsthand. Each month, she witnesses between 10 and 16 names added to Toronto’s memorial for people who have died while living unhoused.
“We have people literally dying on the street in every season of the year,” said Crowe. (more...)
Homelessness in Canada has reached a humanitarian crisis level, experts warn
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