Homelessness and Panhandling in Toronto

[Pep'rJack]

So for those of you who are blaming Miller for not doing enough, where is this money to come from?

Where else? From the remaining 80% of the salaries of those lazy, spoiled municipal employees, who do nothing but enrage everyone with their incessant gorging off Miller's Stalinist teat, and who all live like veritable kings n' queens off YOUR hard-earned money! Please don't sass the 'adults', who are now busy making the ever-present 'hard choices' in order to save us frothing commies from our own insanity and inherent evil. Haven't you been paying attention? 'They' are killing us in the streets now! Tomorrow it'll surely be your mother or your kid unless we 'round 'em all up and do 'what needs to be done'.

Really, man, try to keep up - there's a war on.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Is the issue here panhandlers or homelessness, or is it violent youth crime?

Honestly I think we're just tired of the untidy riff-raff populating our city streets and use PC phrases like aggressive panhandling when what we want is someone to take control of the situation and move these fellows on.

When I was a young lad in London, UK I can recall the constabulary waking up the tramps who were sleeping on park benches and telling them to move on. Where they went to wasn't his (or our) concern, but move on he did. Harsh and unfair treatment indeed, but we've always treated one another by how we look. IMHO, the rest of us regular middle and mid-upper class working city folk do not or can not live in harmony with the riff-raff, especially the street populations of addicts, mentally ill, beggars and homeless. We want them off the streets, and like the Bobby of my childhood, we don't care where they go, provided they're gone.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

IMHO, the rest of us regular middle and mid-upper class working city folk do not or can not live in harmony with the riff-raff, especially the street populations of addicts, mentally ill, beggars and homeless. We want them off the streets, and like the Bobby of my childhood, we don't care where they go, provided they're gone.

Last time I've checked, people like you do not own the streets. What's next on the hit list? People of certain ethnicities and socioeconomic class in your neighourhood being told to excuse themselves to make room your preciousness?

Quite frankly, you should leave a little of your class attitude behind - otherwise, you'd be better off back to where you came from.

AoD

 

[lordmandeep]

Indeed that would send us back a 100 years, but experiences can change you.

if you get attacked by a homeless man, would you still be as quick to defend them???

better yet, move to said locale, instead of replicating your paradise here.

are you trying to say, that because here in Canada we allow the homeless live on the street that Canada is a much greater society then the rest of the world??? Its not something to be proud off, its disturbing that a country with so much wealth and so many social services can allow such things to happen.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Last time I've checked, people like you do not own the streets.

No, I'm speaking figuratively, and trying to put myself in the shoes of a lot of folks who are IMO just tired of the panhandling and street people, and want them gone, especially since our government(s) seem to be doing nothing about it, where the best our police can do is tell us not to look the beggars in the eye.

People are tired and IMO worn out to the point of past caring. If, for example, all the city's beggars and street people simply vanished, do you think the average Toronto middle to high income homeowner would care what happened to them? No, they'd simply remark a few months later that they'd not seen any beggars or homeless on the streets in some time. I'd like to think I'd care, but honestly I probably wouldn't notice the lack of street folks until I read in the Star about the shortage of work for outreach workers.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Neither can you in Beijing, or some anonymous gated community. Perhaps you should consider visiting...better yet, move to said locale, instead of replicating your paradise here.
AoD

Come on MOD, comparing New York to Beijing is a little weak - way to bring out the extreme example to stiffle a fair comparison of Toronto vs. New York. And I've been to Beijing BTW, and there were plenty of homeless, beggars and street people.

Look, what Toronto needs is a strategy to deal with begging and homeless folks in the city. It's a fair question. Has the city even acknowledged that this is a problem? If it has, where's the plan? Who's asking the hard questions, such as is it in the city's best interest in have shelters in prime downtown tourist and business areas, such as the Gateway Shelter on Jarvis, and if it's not, then where do we put the shelters? Is it in the city's best interest to provide shelter for those not from the city, and if it's not, how do we discourage others from coming (like the mayor of Calgary who smartly told the ROC that if you don't have a job and a place to live lined up before you come, don't come to Calgary)? Is it in the city's best interest to allow panhandling outside its tourist destinations such as theatres, or outside banks and restaurants, and if it's not, how do we legislate it away and deal with the likely constitutional challenge it will provoke? Honestly, I don;t have answers for any of these points, but will our government at least make an attempt to address the hard questions?

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

"I'd like to think I'd care, but honestly I probably wouldn't notice the lack of street folks until I read in the Star about the shortage of work for outreach workers."

That last bit is a great line, and absolutely true.

 

[lordmandeep]

banning panhandling would eliminate the fake ones (who aren't poor) and would make some try harder to provide for themselves. The ones that are left would be a smaller number and would be easier to deal with...

help the ones who really need...you don't have to help everyone if some don't want it.

 

[Tewder]

Last time I've checked, people like you do not own the streets. What's next on the hit list? People of certain ethnicities and socioeconomic class in your neighourhood being told to excuse themselves to make room your preciousness?

Quite frankly, you should leave a little of your class attitude behind - otherwise, you'd be better off back to where you came from.

AoD

Wow, that's a little reactionary isn't it??

Nobody has a 'right' to live in the street, the street is not a home. Nobody has a right to harass and intimidate others for money. Is this the enlightened and just Toronto you want? If so, where do you choose to draw the line?? Tent villages in Queen's Park or Dundas Square or NPS are okay by you? Or maybe they should only be allowed to squat along commercial strips? Local BIA's could provide attractive clothing or an area-appropriate hat for begging, i.e. a top hat for Yorkville, a fedora for Little Italy... Then again, maybe you prefer to let them set up home on residential sidewalks, where they could provide neighbourhood watch services at the same time!

Allowing people to live and beg in the streets is not the solution, it's a cop out! If social services and shelters etc are lacking then we should address this, both publicly through funding and privately through charitable organizations. There will always be people on the streets and there will always be people beyond help, but we can't let the inmates run the assylum.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Wow, that's a little reactionary isn't it??

I think our MOD is having a bad day...I can see it now, Starbucks in hand, rubbing the goatee, cursing that he has to content with all these freaking ignorant red-neck conservatives on his previously pristine leftist discussion forum

 

[lordmandeep]

i was a die hard liberal but i am now in the centre. Both sides have great faults so you take the best of both.


You need to be harsh and fair in this society. Be to harsh your a dictatorship, be to fair it must be communist.

 

[unimaginative2]

Panhandlers now expected to face charges of murder in stabbing
OMAR EL AKKAD AND JEFF GRAY

With a report from Canadian Press

August 14, 2007

Charges against a group of panhandlers held by police in connection with the stabbing death of a tourist last week are expected to be upgraded today from aggravated assault to murder, police sources say.

Ross Hammond of St. Catharines died early Saturday morning in a Toronto hospital from multiple stab wounds. Police say Mr. Hammond, 32, and a friend were walking on Queen Street West toward Niagara Street last Thursday when four panhandlers approached them for money.

That quickly turned into a heated exchange, and Mr. Hammond was stabbed in the back and chest. It is not clear how the situation escalated to a fight, or what the timeline of the stabbings was; some of the suspects also received stab wounds.

It is also unclear why investigators have waited this long to upgrade the charges, and what degree of murder charge will be filed against the two male and two female panhandlers, all in their early 20s.

Mr. Hammond became the city's 51st homicide victim of 2007, and his killing reignited debate over Toronto's approach to dealing with panhandlers.

Yesterday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty warned against overreacting to the fatal attack on Mr. Hammond, saying it is not necessarily a symptom of something more serious.

"I've been Premier for four years; an MPP for 17," he said. "There may have been other incidents of grave injury caused by panhandlers, but nothing's coming to my mind."

A spokesman for Mayor David Miller, Stuart Green, said the incident was far beyond a case of aggressive panhandling, which he pointed out is already illegal: "What happened on the weekend is tragic, and is really regrettable, but it's not the norm."

Mr. Green said the city has taken action on panhandling, launching a pilot project to survey panhandlers downtown in order to devise a strategy to tackle the problem.

The project, run by the city's shelter, support and housing administration division, began this July and will run through September. Phil Brown, the division's general manager, stressed that the project does not target aggressive panhandlers. He said it targets only those who panhandle lawfully. The project has three goals, Mr. Brown said, the first being to find out why panhandlers do what they do.

"Some panhandle just for cigarettes, some panhandle because they've run out of food, some panhandle because they can't pay the rent. Other people panhandle for ... drugs," Mr. Brown said.

The nine workers conducting the project also tell panhandlers about the services available to them, Mr. Brown said - from food banks to health care and housing.

In many ways, the panhandling pilot project is built on the same foundations as a similar initiative targeting the homeless that began two years ago. By focusing on social services and working with the homeless through every step of securing shelter, it managed to get 1,300 people off the streets in two years, Mr. Brown said.

However, staff working on the panhandling project do not deal with aggressive panhandlers who threaten, use abusive language or solicit while intoxicated. Those people fall under the jurisdiction of the police.

Earlier this year, a Toronto City Council committee considered a ban on panhandling in downtown tourist areas. Several advocacy groups blasted the proposal as unconstitutional. Some local businesses also rallied against the ban.

It is as yet unclear what, if any, impact last Thursday's killing will have on the panhandling ban or similar proposals.

"Council has already determined that panhandling is an issue in Toronto," Mr. Green said. " ... We can't make aggressive panhandling any more illegal than it already is."

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Tewder:

Wow, that's a little reactionary isn't it??

Reactionary? If reacting to someone who just wanted to get the problem out of their sight by whatever means necessary, without considering the broader personal and social implications is considered "reactionary", then you know what, guilty as charged. Let me tell you what is reactionary instead - looking at one isolated violent incident and categorically lumping every issue in relation to homelessness and saying that it is "the problem", then proclaming that the issue can be dealt with by snapping one's finger.

Nobody has a 'right' to live in the street, the street is not a home. Nobody has a right to harass and intimidate others for money. Is this the enlightened and just Toronto you want? If so, where do you choose to draw the line?? Tent villages in Queen's Park or Dundas Square or NPS are okay by you? Or maybe they should only be allowed to squat along commercial strips? Local BIA's could provide attractive clothing or an area-appropriate hat for begging, i.e. a top hat for Yorkville, a fedora for Little Italy... Then again, maybe you prefer to let them set up home on residential sidewalks, where they could provide neighbourhood watch services at the same time!

So yes, nobody has the "right" to live on the street - in the meantime, what is one going to do about it? Where are these people going to be? Shelters? Do we have enough to house all the homeless? Are we willing to take a long hard look at the conditions inside one? How about jailcells? Hospital ERs? Arrest them and then ship them elsewhere, as if they somehow the problem will miraculously solve itself? Stop being so glib and actually think about the issue rationally, shall we?

Allowing people to live and beg in the streets is not the solution, it's a cop out! If social services and shelters etc are lacking then we should address this, both publicly through funding and privately through charitable organizations. There will always be people on the streets and there will always be people beyond help, but we can't let the inmates run the assylum.

Indeed, and in the meantime, are we willing to pony up the dough and effort to deal with the issue at hand? So far, all I am hearing from the select few is sweeping the issue under the rug through some unspecified application of "the law", at the same time, taking the philosophy that homelessness is exclusively the problem with the individual. Out of sight, out of mind.

AoD

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I think our MOD is having a bad day...I can see it now, Starbucks in hand, rubbing the goatee, cursing that he has to content with all these freaking ignorant red-neck conservatives on his previously pristine leftist discussion forum

Yeah, and considering you're been banned for an extended period of time and subsequently masquaraded as Abeja Almirante, you should know.

AoD

 

[Admiral Beez]

A spokesman for Mayor David Miller, Stuart Green, said the incident was far beyond a case of aggressive panhandling, which he pointed out is already illegal: "What happened on the weekend is tragic, and is really regrettable, but it's not the norm."

Mr. Green said the city has taken action on panhandling, launching a pilot project to survey panhandlers downtown in order to devise a strategy to tackle the problem.

Tourists and those shopping or working downtown do not share the politician's apparent natural distinction between aggressive and friendly panhandlers. If a tourists walks out of a theatre and there's a fellow there asking for hand-outs either with his ratty sign, speach or just holding out his cup, it's still an intrusion on the tourists likely otherwise good feelings of the evening and the city. The couple who drives from small town Ontario or the USA and stops at the bottom of the Gardiner to make their way to their downtown hotel should not have to wonder about that scuffy fellow with his cup walking up and down the lines of stopped traffic - what kind of welcoming is that.

I ask again, what is the city's plan to rid us of panhandling, final. Forget about targetting aggressive panhandling, that's a PC paper tiger used by politicos as a way of doing nothing.