The City of Toronto is conducting a sweep of Rosedale Valley Road, removing homeless people who live either under the bridges that cross the ravine or in tents in the more densely wooded areas. The city also intends to remove a lot of the debris that has accumulated there. CBC news quotes mayor John Tory as citing health and safety concerns. He makes it sound like an act of municipal benevolence. These people will be relocated to shelters. Tory assures “that there is space … specifically set aside, in shelters adequate to house all the people that will be dislocated.”
As a person who frequents Rosedale Valley and the underside of its bridges, I thought I’d go down and see for myself how the sweep was going. While I saw plenty of city trucks and employees poking around, I didn’t see John Tory there. In particular, I didn’t see him talking to any of the people who are the principal stakeholders in this exercise. While the CBC article claimed there was only one person left as of yesterday, that simply was not true. Front line workers were telling people they could take two bags with them. They had to leave everything else behind where, presumably, it will be tossed. The refrain I constantly hear from homeless people—and heard again this morning—is that they don’t feel safe in shelters. There aren’t enough beds, they’re dirty and violent. People feel safer living rough under bridges.
Walking around the garbage, the support workers, the cleanup crews, the media picking the bones, I start to hear Leonard Cohen singing in my head. On the one hand, there are the political claims that get parroted in the media, and on the other hand there is what everybody knows:
Everybody knows it’s only optics. Dirt and garbage and graffiti offend Rosedale sensibilities. A sweep calms the anxious residents and makes mayor Tory look like a man of action. They swallow his decisive moves like tabs of Valium.
Everybody knows this accomplishes nothing. It’s a broom that resettles the dirt. The city can’t force a homeless man into a shelter; that would be incarceration and the man’s only crime is to spoil our illusion of a tiny perfect city. Soon, he will come back.
Everybody knows that the garbage he gathers to himself is our garbage. His sin is to remind us that it is, after all, our garbage, not his.
Everybody knows this only ever happens when a low-tax pro-business ideologue holds power. A Tory mayor believes a low-tax pro-business stance solves all problems, including homelessness; the only way homelessness is possible in such a situation is if the homeless man somehow allowed this to happen to himself; it must be his fault; it sure as hell isn’t my fault.
Everybody knows graffiti is somehow implicated. Once the sweep is done, they’ll come in and grey wash everything. Bland is best. There’s nothing quite like concrete on a dull winter’s morn.
