`The people of the street'
Graeme Bacque (gbacque@idirect.com)
Wed, 28 Oct 1998 05:43:05 -0500
October 28, 1998
`The people of the street'
JOHN MAHLER/TORONTO STAR
MANY VOICES: About 150 people met at All Saints Church yesterday to
mourn two homeless men.
Homeless call on council to declare disaster
By Nicholas Keung
Toronto Star Staff Reporter
They call the streets their home and they treat each other like brothers
and sisters.
Yesterday, they gathered at All Saints Church at Dundas and Sherbourne
Sts., to give voice to their plight and grieve over the latest
tragedies. About 150 people asked city council to endorse a motion today
calling on the provincial and federal government to declare homelessness
in Toronto and across the country a national disaster.
After the meeting, Ian White and others laid flowers outside the Maxwell
Meighen Centre at Queen and Sherbourne Sts., where the bodies of two
homeless men - Wesley Miararka, 46, and Dean O'Neil, 38 - were found
Friday.
Miararka, who suffered from depression, was found hanging from a tree
behind the men's hostel, on the same street corner where O'Neil died
from an overdose earlier that day.
White said he hopes their deaths will mean something to Toronto
councillors when they vote on the motion today.
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`I would like them to vote on their conscience and declare homelessness
as a national disaster.'
- Ian White
Homeless unemployed welder
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``I would like them to vote on their conscience and declare homelessness
as a national disaster,'' said White, 44, who lost his Barrie house in
July after being laid off as a welder in Vaughan.
``It's truly sad to be down here and see what's going on with people on
the streets, sleeping in bus shelters, in the parks, under boxes and
wherever they could find a warm place to stay.''
About 150 homeless people will gather at Metro Hall this morning before
the vote as a reminder to politicians.
A staff report on the homeless, which will also come before council
today, says Toronto is facing a shortfall of more than 400 hostel beds
for the homeless this winter.
Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman said yesterday that politicians in Ottawa and
at Queen's Park are ``sitting back on their cans'' while the homeless
suffer and said he will pursue both governments for help.
``They don't want to talk. But we're going to force them to talk,'' he
said.
More than 300 national organizations from across the country have
already endorsed the declaration prepared by the Toronto Disaster Relief
Committee - a homeless activist group that took the declaration to the
city's community and neighbourhood services committee earlier this
month. The disaster relief committee also organized yesterday's
gathering and today's showing at Metro Hall.
The deaths of Miararka and O'Neil came three weeks after Vernon Crow,
40, was found dead, surrounded by empty bottles of cooking wine at Huron
and Dundas Sts.
This is the way society treats the homeless today, said a middle-aged
man, who goes by the street name Billy.
``They look at us as second-class citizens and actually we're not,'' he
said. ``Each and everyone of us, no matter how low we've gone, we're all
number-one-class persons, the people of the street, the real people.''
Anne Golden, who heads a task force on homelessness established by the
city, expressed her support for effective action in a letter to Lastman.
``We will have a major crisis unless there is a concerted effort to
address this emergency in the short term,'' Golden wrote.
The city's 4,200 hostel beds are full most nights.
The city has identified five new sites for emergency housing that could
provide 250 beds.
Lastman said that of the five locations being considered for temporary
shelters, three are in Toronto and two in North York, but he didn't want
to reveal more until local residents are consulted.
Lastman said he is worried by the lack of low-cost rental apartments,
which force some people on to the streets.
Affordable housing is the only solution, agreed Beric German, a
spokesperson for the disaster relief committee.
``In a natural disaster, you have to rebuild people's homes.''
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With files from Jack Lakey and John Spears
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