Should tent cities for the poor continue to exist?

Let me say from the onset, I really do have empathy for people who have no decent places to live in and are forced to live on the streets. It is indeed sad to see a homeless person sleeping in a sleeping bag on a downtown street in the middle of the day or in the winter months, seeing them sleeping on grates from where warm air is blowing upwards. I remember while reading a Toronto newspaper, I saw the picture of a homeless man in an entrance way to a small building. He was wearing no shoes or socks. It was mid winter and he had frozen to death.

Back in the 1930s, hoboes, (homeless people) lived this way outside the cities alongside railroad tracks but those tent cities next to railroad tracks are long gone. That is because they moved right into the heart of the cities. But will the rest of society accept as a satisfactory manner, that way the homeless wish to live out the rest of their lives?

Whatever concern I have for these people, it doesn’t extend to those people who are quite able to work but who choose to beg instead. In one case, there was a woman in Toronto who was richer than most of us. She begged on the streets and then would go home in her Chevy Lumina. She would sit on the ground half the day, shaking and wheezing, begging for pedestrians walking by for their hard earned money. She certainly didn’t have to live in a tent city. She lived in a very expensive home.

After a British Columbia Supreme Court judge ruled recently that Victoria's original bylaw, passed three years ago to prohibit erecting a shelter in a public place, was unconstitutional because there aren't enough shelters to house Victoria's homeless, within hours of the ruling, tents started going up in Victoria's Beacon Hill Park near the province’s legislative building. Camps in that city had since popped up in other city parks.

Days after the judge ruled in Victoria, that homeless people had a right to camp in Victoria's city parks, police moved in to break up the growing tent city. The police were enforcing a new bylaw that doesn't prevent camping in public places, but tries to regulate it by only allowing camping overnight.

This would mean that homeless people who live in their tents would have to break camp at sunrise and carry their tents with them all day until it begins to turn dark outside. Currently, if a homeless person is outside and he or she sets up some form of shelter for him or herself, before dark, that's illegal. Unfortunately, this is a real dilemma for homeless people.

A group of Christian activists who erected a homeless camp in the downtown eastside of Vancouver B.C., recently squatted on city-owned property indefinitely --- or at least until they can argue before B.C. Supreme Court that Vancouver's burgeoning homeless population has a legal right to occupy such sites.

The risks for people sleeping on the street are heightened in Winnipeg, Manitoba because the conditions in Winnipeg are very different than the conditions in Victoria and Vancouver. The homeless in Winnipeg would be facing freezing temperatures during the winter months. So far, no one has heard of anyone during that season putting up a tent. The homeless would be looking for indoor shelters because it's an issue of survival. I know. I lived in that city for three years and during the winter months, it was really COLD.

Cities, including Toronto, have said for years there are enough shelter beds for the homeless, according to street nurse, Cathy Crowe, who was arrested after trying to set up a tent city in front of province’s legislative building. If that is so, then why are there still so many homeless people living on the streets? Part of the reasons is that the homeless who sleep in the shelters at night, have to leave them in the morning and can only return to them at night.

A point to consider is that the parks are paid for by the taxpayers (which homeless people do not) so that the taxpayers will have a place to go and enjoy some open spaces and see the flowers and other plants, etc. The taxpayers are being cheated when they are denied this by the unsightly tents and garbage strewn around by the homeless campers.

What about sanitation? There are no toilet facilities so obviously, that is where the tent dwellers are relieving themselves. That became an obvious fact when during the summer months in Toronto, homeless people slept on the beaches and later when the other people wandered on the beaches on a sunny day, they and their children would walk through of minefield of human feces.

A number of homeless people in Toronto, erected a small tent city under a bridge in the downtown area a year or so ago and later, they and their makeshift shelters were forcible removed and taken down by the police. I don’t know where they went after that. I have on occasions, while hiking in the forested areas of Toronto, seen tents in the forests so I suppose that is one solution to these unfortunate people. The police can’t remove these tents because they are not in public parks. However, deep in a forest sleeping in a sleeping bag in a small tent in the middle of a cold winter without any heat available to them other than from their own bodies; is extremely risky.

Similar tent cities have sprung up in the United States, such as in Seattle, Washington; San Diego, Fresno, California; Columbus, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee. In Seattle, where as many as 150 homeless persons have been moving around to thwart authorities, they have dubbed their community, Nickelsville, named for Mayor Greg Nickels.

What are the answers to this problem? To begin with, there should be more shelters built. Second, these shelters should be open all day and night. Third, welfare assistance should be available to homeless people. Fourth, occupational training should be made available to them. This won’t necessarily remove the problems in their entirety, but I feel confident that it will relieve the cities of unsightly sights of homeless people sleeping on the streets or in libraries and there certainly would be no need for tent cities.