Home is a cardboard box . . .
Graeme Bacque (gbacque@idirect.com)
Fri, 23 Oct 1998 05:40:46 -0700
October 23, 1998
Home is a cardboard box . . .
. . . And woman facing eviction
Told to leave tiny shack on city-owned church grounds or face jail
By Peter Edwards
Toronto Star Staff Reporter
Sometime today, Julie Hanna expects to move out of her home.
It's a 2-foot by 4-foot cardboard and wood shack on the city-owned
grounds of the Metropolitan United Church, at Church St. and Queen St.
E.
Hanna said police have given her and about 20 other squatters until this
morning to move on.
Hanna, 30, knows it isn't much, but the church grounds have been home
for the past three years.
``Unless you're in our shoes, you can't really understand,'' Hanna said.
``I never planned to live like this.''
Hanna said police told the squatters yesterday that they had to move on
or face fines or jail.
She said she hopes to get temporary housing in a shelter, but is
nervous.
``The shelters are full and there's zero housing,'' said Ase Hallgren,
of the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee, a homeless activist group.
Superintendent Aidan Maher of downtown 52 Division, in the Dundas St. W.
and University Ave. area, could not be reached for comment.
Councillor Jack Layton said he's mystified about where the push came
from to move the homeless.
There's a shelter nearby on Richmond St. E., which Layton (Don River)
said he visited recently.
``It was 20 per cent over capacity that night,'' he said. ``It simply
cannot take any more people. All of the hostels are full.''
Some of the squatters work as hookers and some have drug problems. Hanna
said she became homeless when fire destroyed her low-rent apartment
building three years ago.
``I can get first month's (rent) but I can't get the last month's,'' she
said.
Hanna said she feels lucky just to have a roof over her head when it
rains.
``It saves all of our clothes from going mouldy,'' she said.
Hanna said that she and other squatters on the park grounds would love
to be able to support themselves.
``There are people who want to do something with their lives,'' she
said.
As she spoke, fellow homeless camper Robin Young, 33, folded his
belongings, preparing to put some in a shopping cart and others in a
barrel.
``I don't know where I'm going,'' said Young, who has also camped on the
church grounds for three years. ``I don't know what I'm going to eat,
where I'm going to shower. I don't know nothing any more.''
The squatters now shower at nearby hostels and food is dropped off to
them at the church grounds.
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