#OutintheCold Report Officially Released!

[blake 3:17]

#OutintheCold Report Officially Released!
Submitted by ocap on Mon, 02/15/2016 - 19:48.

A survey and study of Toronto's shelter system backup, the volunteer-run Out of the Cold (OOTC) program, conducted last month by members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty has been publicly released today and is already driving discussion around the ongoing implosion of the emergency shelter system.

The study's findings, based on numerous visits to OOTC locations and interviews with over 100 service users, point to a shelter system on the verge of collapse, plagued by constant overcrowding, inhumane conditions and a city government unwilling to take action to alleviate a crisis that has been decades in the making and shows no signs of easing. The study affords a rare glimpse into the night by night struggles of hard-working people of conscience desperate to fill the gaps left by an overcrowded, underfunded shelter system and the toll this state of affairs has on both the program's volunteer staff and the service users lost in the cracks.

OCAP isn't merely content to document the obscene state of affairs in the city's homeless shelter system. We demand action as well. In that spirit, join us on Wednesday, February 17 as we publicly launch our Out in the Cold report with a demonstration and march to City Hall! Even with numerous deaths on Toronto streets last year, the City still has the audacity to deny funding for vital 24 hour warming centres, much less do the needed work of expanding the shelter system. Come out on Wednesday to hold City Hall to account and join a movement that demands no one is left #OutintheCold!

Public Release Event for Out in the Cold Report and March on City Hall!
Wednesday, February 17
11:00AM
Queen + Sherbourne
Soup provided!

DOWNLOAD A FREE PDF COPY OF OCAP'S "OUT IN THE COLD: THE CRISIS IN TORONTO'S SHELTER SYSTEM" SURVEY HERE

http://www.ocap.ca/node/4003

[blake 3:17]

Ontario’s uncounted homeless dead
Star Investigation: With the exception of a few municipalities in Ontario, no official governing body tracks homeless deaths. We investigate why no one wants to take responsibility for this file.

By: Mary Ormsby Feature reporter, Kenyon Wallace News reporter, Published on Sun Feb 21 2016
Brad Chapman collapsed in the doorway of a Walton St. nail salon in downtown Toronto just before dawn last Aug. 18.
Cocaine, opioids and amphetamines coursed through his body; they were the long-time drug user’s preferred substances. Homeless, the streets were Chapman’s haven for 20 years when he wasn’t in jail. Those dire circumstances for the father of three were a world apart from the middle-class comfort of Etobicoke, where Chapman was raised by a loving family, competed in rep hockey, learned French and played piano by ear.
A security guard making his rounds shortly before 5 a.m. at the Chelsea Hotel, just steps from the nail salon, noticed a man slumped over in an alcove. To the man’s left lay a syringe, spoon and a cigarette lighter; to his right, an empty Crown Royal bottle, a police report would later note. The concerned guard, George Plaier, called 911.
That man, later identified as Chapman, was dying. Chapman would soon become part of Ontario’s growing ghost population: The uncounted homeless dead.
A Star investigation has found that the province and most municipalities across Ontario do not track homeless deaths fully — or at all — and as a result, have no accurate understanding of the scope of the tragedy and how best to solve it. Ontario chief coroner Dr. Dirk Huyer said there is no mechanism under current legislation to track all homeless deaths.

Anti-poverty advocates are calling on the province to change that. They say this under-reporting downplays the problem and prevents the government from properly addressing the root causes.
The City of Toronto, for example, tracks deaths of shelter residents; there have been 217 since 2007. Outreach workers say many others die outside of shelters and are not counted, like Chapman. A volunteer group in Toronto that keeps an unofficial list of GTA homeless deaths, including those of shelter residents and those living on the streets, recorded 295 deaths in the same time period — a difference of 78. The group’s list dates back to the mid-1980s and puts the tally at more than 800.
After the 911 call, police from 52 Division arrived first at Chapman’s side, but couldn’t rouse him and called for an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, Chapman had no vital signs. Police and firefighters performed CPR as the paramedics scrambled to clear his breathing passages, suctioning out vomit while injecting powerful drugs directly into his jugular vein to restart his heart. They frantically worked on Chapman for half an hour, eventually resuscitating him.
The ambulance raced him to Toronto General Hospital, where Chapman was put on life support. The hospital listed him as a John Doe. Police collected his belongings at the scene. Four days later, a police photographer going through Chapman’s effects found a shelter card with Chapman’s name on it, but there is no record of police contacting the hospital with this information, according to a police spokesperson.
Chapman’s family only learned of his grave condition six days later — thanks to a sleuthing hospital spiritual counsellor — and quickly gathered in his 10th-floor room in intensive care. His anguished mother, Cori Chapman, agreed to withdraw life support from the troubled son she loved so much.

Chapman was surrounded by his mother, two siblings, a cousin and his own three children when he died on Aug. 26. He was 43. The cause of death: multi-drug overdose, according to his hospital records.
The coroner’s office reviewed Chapman’s death and deemed no investigation was necessary.
Because he did not die in a city-administered shelter, and his passing was not deemed suspicious, his death in hospital from an accidental overdose on the street put him on no official list.
Like hundreds of other homeless people who have died in Ontario over the last three decades, Chapman has become an invisible statistic.
“Measuring a problem is the first step towards addressing it. And if you don’t measure it, it tends not to be a high priority,” said Dr. Stephen Hwang, director of the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital and one of Canada’s pre-eminent experts on homelessness.
“We measure the unemployment rate, we measure inflation, we measure all kinds of things we feel are important to track and keep our eyes on both as the general public and as policy-makers and politicians . . . How can you keep your focus on that if you don’t track it on a regular basis?”

article and video: http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/02/21/ontarios-uncounted-homeless-dead.html

[blake 3:17]

An Inside Look at Toronto's Inadequate Shelter System


It's 8 PM on a Saturday near the end of February. It's cool out, but not cold. I'm standing outside Blythwood Baptist Church with a hot cup of coffee in my hand, courtesy of the Out of the Cold (OOTC) shelter program running in the basement below. To my right, half-illuminated by a dirty industrial light bolted to the building, a cloud of cigarette smoke escapes from Brian DuBourdieu's lips. He had begun telling me about the time someone dropped him off at this same church a few years ago—drunk, homeless, and nearly frozen.
"They found me in a ditch," he tells me while packing away his carton of discount cigarettes. DuBourdieu, 59, says he uses the term "they" because he never actually met the people who saved him five years ago. He only knows some vague details from his own recollection and that of what his friends have told him: One night in the winter of 2010, a vehicle found him passed out in a snowy ditch. The occupants picked him up, tossed him in the car, brought him to the church, and left before he woke up. I asked him if it was strange that people who saved his life didn't want to meet him. Unphased, he laughed at the idea.

"They were taking a huge risk taking me in with them. They didn't know me, I could have been anybody. I could have been somebody who might've attacked them for being woken up like that. It was just a very nice thing to do, and a very rare thing to do."

DuBourdieu was born in Newfoundland and grew up like many people do—erratically and full of angst. Although he made it through high school and into a solid university program, he flunked out in his second year while battling the bottle. His alcoholism would plague him for years to come as he had trouble finding a steady job in a struggling Newfoundland economy. Wanting to get away and get paid, he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Canadian Navy. He stayed there until the 80s before joining the coast guard. Cheap booze and a hard drinking culture came with the job.

In the 90s, DuBourdieu had moved to Toronto where he framed and roofed houses. A few years in, he suffered a knee injury on the job that made it tough for him to keep up. All the while, the seduction of liquor pulled him further away from work and deeper into a depressive rut. Before long, things had fallen apart. DuBourdieu was homeless, and he'd stay like that for over a decade. Performing the daily grind of hopping from shelter to shelter, staying in hostels when he could afford it, and getting drunk to pass the time when he couldn't.

Nowadays, DuBourdieu works as a volunteer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP). After finding a place in veterans' housing around four years ago, he's cleaned up his life. He spends much his time now working within outreach community and interacting with the homeless. While he knows first hand how helpful the system can be, he's also aware that—as it is now—the need for affordable housing in Toronto is at a critical mass.

"They wouldn't do this to cats and dogs," DuBourdieu tells me, waving in the direction of the dozens of beds crammed beside each other in Blythwood's basement. "We need housing. Right now, not later. This is not humane by any stretch of the imagination."

There are roughly 5,200 people who are homeless in Toronto, although that doesn't mean all of them are on the street. A good portion of that number have found some sort of temporary emergency housing through the city's Streets to Homes program, while others may be crashing at friend or family member's place. It's not living like most of us do, but they have a home.

Of the few hundred or so who roam the streets every night, however, most rely partly or entirely on private non-profits like OOTC—a program that is run by a rotating collective of the city's churches. With that said, charitability only goes so far: according to OCAP, around 81 percent of Toronto's homeless will be denied shelter at OOTC centres due to overcrowding, leaving most of them to spend their night in the streets.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/a-night-in-the-life-of-torontos-homeless