The now rather notorious address of 1591 Bayview Ave. has a new message on the plywood hoarding It is signed by the charity Raising The Roof and it says:
You told us you don’t want a shelter here. Neither do we Support us in creating long-term solutions Let’s end homelessness.
This sign seems to be a form of peace-offering from the charity, and whoever else it employed, for staging the “homeless shelter” hoax on South Bayview residents and businesses last Friday. It may be a peace-offering but it is a quite underwhelming one. There is no expression of regret. Raising The Roof clings to a doubtful moral high ground that it agrees with the hapless people it duped.
Look, Raising The Roof has surely done good work and will do so again. We wish them well. But there has been a colossal failure of judgement which ought to be acknowledged. Beyond this, residents of South Bayview are not unfamiliar with the realities and human loss created by the so-called homeless. We say so-called because in this City, and right here on Bayview Ave., many of the homeless are homeless in name only. They are not without shelter — some are said to have owned property — but they prefer life on the street (or in the alleys). There is nothing good about this but it reveals a problem that is enormously more complicated than the building of shelters, as important as that may be There are said to be about 5,000 officially “homeless” people in Toronto. They are tracked as best they can be and receive attention from municipal Outreach workers. Angels, all of them.
