OPINION
12 Obiter Dicta
A Roof Over Their Heads
The right to housing
esther mendelsohn › staff writer
S
ociet ie s a r e j u dged by the manner in
which they treat their most vulnerable.
How will ours be judged?
Over the course of less than one week in
January, two homeless men died out in the cold.
They died because they were exposed to the elements with no place to go, not in a far-flung devel oping nation, but here in Toronto.
In an epoch when nearly everyone has a phone
that can count steps walked, recommend nearby
restaurants, and talk to its owner, it is unconscionable that anywhere between 250,000 and 350,000
people sleep on the streets of this country every
night.
It is too easy to disavow any similarity between
those people and ourselves. Surely, they did something to end up homeless. They most likely chose to
be out on the street. They’re all drunks, drug addicts,
mentally ill, gamblers, lazy, or otherwise undesirable. Or so we tell ourselves. Toronto Life published
the story of a formerly homeless youth. Raised in
one of the city’s
most
aff luent neighbou rhoods, she was
bullied in school
and turned to the
w ron g crowd—
and the drugs they offered her—in order to escape.
She was kicked out of her home and wound up on
the street, working in the sex trade, addicted to
drugs, desperate, and alone. It can happen to anyone.
People lose their jobs, become critically ill and
unable to work, go through acrimonious divorces,
suffer from addiction or mental illness, or escape
abuse, and end up on the street. No one chooses this
life; the choice between constantly being beaten and
living on the street is not a meaningful one.
Once there, they are often subjected to further
abuse and threats to their safety and bodily integrity.
The streets are cold and surviving is no simple task.
If they’re lucky we’ll throw (quite literally) some
spare change into their cups, or buy them coffees
because we don’t want our money going to drugs
or alcohol. More often than not, though, we simply
glide by, talking on our phones, laughing with
friends, listening to music, carrying on with our
lives.
If we do decide to spare some change, we carefully select the recipients of our magnanimity, as
though we are the arbiters of who is deserving of our
hard-earned money. I submit to you that anyone on
the street is deserving of our compassion and help
and should not be made to feel humiliated.
While ignoring the plight of the homeless has
been a mark of shame, the most outrageous part
of how our society deals with homelessness, however, may just be the criminalization of it. The Safe
Streets Act was enacted in 1999 as a response to the
supposed nuisance caused by “squeegee kids.”
Under the Act, homeless people sleeping on the
street can be issued fines, none of which they can
pay, of course. Accruing enough unpaid tickets
could land someone in jail. The tickets are meant to
push homeless people off the streets—no doubt in an
effort to further gentrify and beautify the city—but
where can they possibly be expected to go?
The Supreme Court has recognized commercial expression as a right when the party seeking to
enforce that right has been a large corporation, but
squeegee kids soliciting windshield washing services do not have the same right.
I was a kid when squeegee kids could be seen
on street corners waiting for cars to stop. When
I debated with
some of the
adults in my life
t he mer it s of
a l low i ng these
mostly homeless teens to offer
their services squeegeeing the windshields of cars at
red lights in exchange for whatever coins the drivers had lying around, I was patted on the head and
told that when I grow up and understand the issues,
I will change my mind.
Well, I have grown up and I now have a deeper
understanding of the issues but I have definitely not
changed my mind. If anything, I am more convinced
than ever of the injustice of this law. One of its original proponents, former Ontario Attorney General
Michael Bryant, has now called for its repeal. My
ten-year-old self feels vindicated knowing that a
child had a better grasp on reality and justice than
all those condescending, head-patting adults.
Today, politicians are finally taking note of the
problem. Toronto Mayor John Tory should be commended for eschewing exactitudes and protocols,
and instead opening up more shelter beds on the
coldest winter nights. But shelters are not permanent homes, and they are not permanent solutions.
The Ontario government has committed itself to
addressing homelessness, particularly youth homeless, in the province. It is laudable that many of the
“As with many social ills,
homelessness costs more than
its eradication.”
t humbs down
Yahoo’s single-use password “on demand.”
ê Photo credit: TheRoughEdits.wordpress.com
policies are aimed at preventing homelessness, but
we must also tend to those currently on the street.
Ontarians must also hold the government’s feet to
the fire and insist that it follow through with these
measures.
The South African Constitution includes the right
to housing. Though the results have been a mixed
bag, it has been an important first step.
In what can be described as a missed opportunity,
the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled against the right
to housing, which would have created corollary positive obligations on the part of the government to
enact legislation addressing the issue of housing, as
it did in South Africa.
As with many other social ills, homelessness costs
more than its eradication. It costs the taxpayer up to
$120, 000 per homeless person per year for institutional responses, as opposed to as little as $18,000
for affordable housing. But even if the balance sheet
indicated the reverse, I suggest that it is immoral not
to address the crisis, regardless of the cost.
As future lawyers, we must consider how we can
shape and advance the law. While the court may not
have recognized Charter breaches in this round, we
should work in the spirit of Charter values and insist
that security of the person be a guiding principle for
legislation and policy pertaining to homelessness.
Creating more affordable housing, instead of
flashy expensive condos, and allowing parents to
have their children of a different gender stay with
them in shelters are some changes we as future lawyers should be advocating for.
Humanitarian crises like the recent Ebola outbreak cast the eyes of the world on the abject poverty
in which so many across the globe live. For many, it
threw into sharp relief the pri vilege in which we live
and which seems to never quite suffice. Considering
the staggering numbers—which become even more
shocking in Aboriginal communities—how will our
society be judged? u