Uncontrolled immigration and inflation have created a housing crisis, homeless encampments, and people losing hope and their lives
Patrick Meagher
Farmers Forum
Have you noticed driving into some of the smaller cities across Ontario that a homeless population has suddenly taken over a park, or a downtown street corner and that small tent cities are popping up like pimples on a teenager?
Cities and towns across the province saw an astounding more than 1,400 homeless encampments last year, reported the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
In Windsor, the commissioner of human and health services, Andrew Daher, told the Windsor Star that the homeless are not just drug addicts and the mentally ill but includes “people who had a home for 20 or 30 years and have been either rent-evicted or who can no longer afford the rent.”
At one time, there were more than 100 homeless encampments in London and the city’s deputy city manager on social and health development Kevin Dickens conceded that homeless encampments are here to stay. He told CTV news that “they are the fabric of every municipality now.”
And they are not just in large cities. Homeless encampments have set up in Chatham, St. Thomas, Orillia, Sarnia, Simcoe, Guelph, Cambridge and Strathroy.
In Eastern Ontario, a Quinte West resident wrote on a Reddit blog: “Homelessness is becoming epic here, even in the smaller towns there are people living in tents in the woods. I’ve lived in the area over 30 years and have never seen homelessness like this.”
The Association of Municipalities of Ontario released a policy paper on homeless encampments in July and blamed both Ontario and federal governments for an abdication of leadership on what it calls a crisis that needs concrete solutions now.
“These encampments are a tragic result of cracks in the foundations of our housing, health, and social systems and are a public policy failure by successive provincial and federal governments,” the policy paper says, adding that an insufficient supply of affordable housing has made things worse.
The policy paper adds that while not causing the housing crisis, municipalities are forced to deal with it. In some cases, encampments are as many as 100 people and include fentanyl trafficking and violence. In winter, some inhabitants have died. Others have suffered from frostbite, resulting in amputation of fingers and toes.
The city of Peterborough came up with an innovative solution. The city built metal cabins that look like shipping containers on a parking lot for the homeless. In this way, the homeless can also have an address and, therefore, get more money.
The homeless on ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) receive about $500 per month. But when they get an address they can receive up to $1,308 per month. At the Peterborough site, tenants pay according to their means. One woman says she pays $560 per month.
For many of these people, getting a job is far from easy. The serious challenge of homelessness is that it’s hard to get a job when you don’t have an address, when you don’t have a phone, when it’s hard to stay clean for a job interview, when you have gaps in employment, bad credit, no vehicle, and it gets even worse if there’s also a criminal record, disabilities and addiction issues. Top the list off with a poor self-image. It’s hard not to be depressed when you’ve hit the pit and carrying all that luggage to a job interview is hard to hide.
The policy paper argues that while the federal government is pouring $500-million into addressing homeless encampments, the federal Parliamentary Budget Officer has determined that what is actually needed is $3.5 billion a year.
Meantime, costs of just about everything are going up and the housing crisis gets worse. The policy paper notes that “a growing number of Ontarians can no longer afford the basic necessities of life. In Ontario, 45 % of tenant households spend 30 % or more of their total income on shelter. This is the highest rate across the country.”
Missing from the policy paper is the fact that massive uncontrolled immigration is the most significant cause of the housing crisis. Canada has opened its doors to just about anyone who walks in, including foreigners with a criminal record.
While Canadians are being pushed out of their homes, new immigrants are being housed in hotels at taxpayer expense. The Toronto Sun reported that the Canadian government paid for hotel rooms and meals for 105,315 illegal immigrants over five years.
Compare that with the more than one in five Canadian families who expect to obtain food or meals from food banks or other community organizations this fall, according to a Statistics Canada survey. Some people are now arguing that the federal government is taking better care of illegals than Canadian citizens.
The Toronto Sun article drew a flurry of angry emails. Wrote Ron MacDonald: “While migrants lived the life they dreamed of, homeless Canadian citizens starved and froze to death while living on the streets.”
Wrote Eric Perrault: “Our overtaxed housing and healthcare system are at breaking points and Trudeau (and Immigration Minister Marc Miller) are inviting 500-thousand immigrants a year. It isn’t ‘racist’ or ‘unfeeling’ to protect your own country, its existing citizens, and its institutions before anything else. We’re already spending like a country three times our population size. Stop this madness!
