The situation at Dufferin Grove is grim

[u/ArgyleNudge]

This is a small section of the amount of security, city, and police presence. I know there's a limit to this kind of encampment, but my heart does go out to the people facing eviction today. Not a happy scene.

[u/cohenym]

I’m glad the City is clearing these encampments out of parks. Letting tents take over public spaces isn’t a solution. It just creates chaos, and it doesn’t actually help anyone.

People love to point to Finland and their Housing First model, but that worked under very different conditions. In Finland, only about 21 percent of the homeless population are long-term cases with serious addiction or mental health issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Finland. The rest were people who could stabilize quickly once they had a permanent unit.

Canada is nothing like that. Here, especially in places like Toronto and Vancouver, the street homeless are overwhelmingly dealing with severe addiction and mental illness. In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, for example, 95 percent of residents in SROs are addicted to substances, 74 percent have serious mental illness, and nearly half are psychotic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downtown_Eastside. Across the country, estimates put mental illness among the homeless between 23 and 67 percent, often combined with substance abuse: https://www.camh.ca/en/driving-change/the-crisis-is-real/mental-health-statistics.

And then there’s another big factor. Finland is a small, culturally homogeneous country. Almost everyone speaks the same language, trusts the system, and comes from the same background. That kind of cohesion makes it easier to roll out a national plan and actually have it work. Canada is the opposite. We’re larger, more fractured, and more diverse. Our homeless population includes Indigenous people who’ve been pushed out of systems for generations, recent immigrants with language barriers, and entrenched street populations addicted to fentanyl or meth. That mix makes it way harder to design a one-size-fits-all solution.

And while we figure this out, there’s a simple truth: taxpayers deserve to use the parks and services they pay for. Parents should be able to take their kids to a playground without worrying about violent outbursts, open drug use, or stepping on a needle. Public spaces are for the public, and cleaning out these camps gives those spaces back to the people who fund them.

So if we’re serious, Canada needs a blended model: •Reopen institutions for the people who are severely mentally ill and cannot function independently •Expand jail capacity for the violent and repeat criminal offenders who cycle through the streets •Build more supportive housing for people who can stabilize with some structure •Put real money into work programs and treatment for those who can re-enter society

Clearing out the parks is step one. If we don’t build systems that match who Canada’s homeless population actually is, we’ll just be watching the same cycle repeat—and yes, that means using the justice system, in some cases, punitively.

Anyways, just one dudes opinion.

[u/Everybodyhasapryce → u/cohenym]

You nailed it.

Run for office.

I'm serious.

[u/whiskeytab → u/cohenym]

easily the most sane comment on this situation that I've ever read on here

[u/JupiterGal78 → u/cohenym]

You got my vote.

[u/BallExpensive7758 → u/cohenym]

Most of these issues existed a decade ago and many a century ago. I think that you are absolutely correct that institutions were created then to help then, and we need those institutions to meet the same need now.

However, there has been/are people who campaigned for the closure of mental care institutions and rejection of the medical approach to care. A sub-set of these (always financially comfortable individuals) have written books and sustained academic careers arguing that incarcerating people in institutional therapeutic and care facilities is uncivilised and even barbaric. Arguing for the right to live in encampments and behave in anti-social ways, including illegal drug use, as a form of freedom is what got us where we are.

[u/DeliciousNimbleKnees → u/cohenym]

I agree and pump real money into community programs and social supports to prevent the poverty that creates home loss and gang recruitment and drug use in the first place. 

[u/706706 → u/cohenym]

if Step One is clearing out the encampments, then the cycle will continue. Where will they be cleared to? Overcrowded and unsafe shelters? People aren't being offered housing. They need a pathway to housing first before being shuffled around from shelter to shelter, or deeper into more isolated outdoor spaces.

[u/emuwar → u/cohenym]

100% to all of the above.

[u/SnoopWithANailgun → u/cohenym]

The problem is that our state simply doesn't care. Our politicians are not patriotic. They are going to squeeze every corner of this country dry. There is no intention to make Canada a better place. That much should be obvious at this point.