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Tent City Eviction |
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September 2002
Evicting Tent City: It’s About Housing, Silly On September 24th, over one hundred homeless squatters were forced to leave their encampment on an unused tract of contaminated Toronto land owned by home building giant Home Depot. There was no warning – just the stark and sudden arrival of security guards, bulldozers and police. Needless to say, the people forced out are reeling from the shock. Many are deeply traumatized. Some are angry, others are philosophical. What the vast majority of them now have in common is that they are now quite literally homeless, and in a worse situation than they were on September 23rd. Why did Tent City, as it was known, appear on Toronto’s waterfront? Was it the allure of setting up house amidst mounds of illegally dumped hazardous waste? Perhaps the seductive call of the truck traffic on Lakeshore Boulevard, or the soothing sounds of container ships being unloaded at all hours? Or maybe it was the opportunity to test one’s pioneer spirit by foregoing the extravagances of hot showers, indoor plumbing and heat? In fact, life at Tent City was hard. It was noisy, dusty, dirty and hazardous. It was unbelievably muddy after a rain, and bitterly cold in the winter. It was very dark after sundown. Rats scuttled around all day and chewed relentlessly through people’s floorboards at night. Making a simple cup of coffee required finding and chopping wood, hauling water and building a fire. Many things can be said about Tent City, but no one can say that life there was easy. People began moving to Tent City about five years ago. A few hardy souls at first, then a few more, and then, of late, a great many more. Although people’s individual stories differed, the vast majority were there because they were homeless and could not afford to pay to live anywhere. The vast majority did not, despite what has been gleefully reported, have illegal electricity hook-ups powering televisions, air conditioners and stereos. But there are two important points to note, which have been given very little attention. First, despite all of the difficulties and challenges of life at Tent City, over one hundred people found it an improvement on life in Toronto’s overcrowded shelters. Second, one hundred shelter beds had to be created to accommodate displaced Tent City residents. Despite the city’s initial claims that 200 shelter beds were lying empty, waiting for Tent City people, in fact city staff were still scrambling to find spaces for people at 11 p.m. on the night of the eviction. This is true because Toronto’s shelter system is full. When a large downtown shelter closed over the summer, the population of Tent City exploded. Coincidence? Of course not. Although city staff and politicians incessantly claim that Toronto has enough shelter beds, the eleventh hour scramble to shelter Tent City folks puts the lie to such nonsense. Was Tent City an idyllic
community? Far from it. And you know what? Neither
is yours or mine. Think what
could be seen and heard on your street if suddenly all the doors and
windows and walls disappeared, if a continuous phalanx of reporters,
camera crews, documentary film makers and tourists traipsed through your
yard day and night. Imagine
what would be laid bare for all to see – the petty arguments, the
yelling, the violence, the drinking, the drug use.
In fact, the casual scrutiny of strangers endured by Tent City
residents was so bad that one woman used to shout “we’re not animals
in the zoo you know” on a regular basis to strolling onlookers ranging
from European tourists snapping pictures to school children on field
trips. The people who lived at Tent City
were just that – people. Human
beings whom I have seen laughing, weeping, worried, generous, depressed,
intoxicated, sick. Who shared
food with neighbours on one side, who argued with the neighbours on the
other side, who shoveled their snow diligently, who never shoveled their
snow at all – probably a lot like you and your neighbours.
The fact that they were living on land that was not theirs has been
used to justify the rough manner in which they were evicted – they
should have known this day would come.
Well, of course they knew. Does
that mean they deserved to have no time to arrange storage of their
belongings or find another place to go?
If you have nowhere to live, little money and fewer prospects, you
may indeed set up home on someone else’s land, thinking that perhaps it
is dirty enough, hazardous enough, remote enough to afford you some time.
You know it will end, but that does not mean you deserve to be
treated as chattel when it does. An even crueler twist to this
story is the fact that the city of Toronto agreed, in January of this
year, to relocate Tent City residents to affordable prefabricated housing
on a non-contaminated site. A
proposal was funded and a site was found.
Some of the residents of Tent City allowed a tiny glimmer of hope
to override their natural cynicism. Most
dared not, arguing bluntly that the move would never happen, that they’d
only believe it when they saw it. Well,
wrangling between the levels of government, delays, zoning issues and
finally, apparently, legal liability worries all colluded to prove those
people right and destroy any vestige of hope that the proposal could be
salvaged. Nonetheless, the decision to
safely house the people at Tent City was made by Toronto City Council
almost a year ago. The lurid
tales depicting Tent City as a den of iniquity are used to make its
destruction seem palatable, even necessary, in the public’s mind.
Likewise, endless recitation about the privileges of private
ownership used to justify the abrupt eviction.
But neither absolves the city from its commitment to house the
people of Tent City in decent, safe shelter temporarily, and in decent
safe housing they can afford permanently.
It is with great relief that we can say that negotiations with the
city are going well, and while somewhat late, we welcome the city’s just
announced rental subsidy program, which could well bring new lives to
those displaced from Tent City. Although Tent City was the first
bona fide shantytown in modern Toronto history, the phenomenon of
squatting is neither new nor unique.
Recently, homeless people have taken over abandoned buildings in
Quebec City, Vancouver and of course elsewhere in Toronto.
Because there comes a point, when there is no shelter bed for you,
when there is nowhere for you to go, when you truly have nothing to lose,
when a tiny spark of self reliance or survival instinct compels you to
just stake a claim and hope for the best. Some will think that the former
residents of Tent City got what they deserved.
It’s easy to think that about people portrayed as conniving,
lazy, system-milking layabouts. But
perhaps not so easy to think that – really think – about the guy who
shingled your roof last week, the woman who walks to her job cleaning
houses in Rosedale every day, or the injured construction worker whose
back is a mangled mess after 25 years of drywall installation and who
can’t get WSIB. No doubt one would find people
with similar stories among those who squatted in British Columbia and
Quebec. One way of dealing
with “the problem” is to call the police and boot them out, to scatter
them to the four winds. But
of course the trouble with this approach is that the four winds don’t
generally blow human beings completely away.
They will eventually turn up somewhere.
And then there is the problem of all those people who will be
homeless tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
Just what sort of trickle down economics do you expect to seep out
of the Enrons and the Nortels and the like?
I’m no economist, but even I can predict that it won’t be
unbridled prosperity for the masses. The people at Tent City are not
simply the sorry authors of their own misfortune, as the politicians would
so like us to believe. They
are the human consequences of economic policies designed to make a few
folks a lot of money – like the real estate speculators, the condominium
owners – and the rest of us be damned.
It is emblematic of the shift towards privatization of all housing.
And the truth is that there are many more people like the ones from
Tent City all across the country. I’m
no housing expert either, but I do know that the solution ain’t rocket
science. If people are too
poor to pay rent, housing needs to be more affordable.
If there isn’t enough affordable housing, governments need to
build it, and plenty of it, because those condo developers sure aren’t
going to do it. Kathy Hardill
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