Breaking up tent camps in city parks can be the right thing to do

Toronto Police and city staff are in the process of clearing out various homeless tent camps throughout the city (as is also happening in Vancouver, Montreal, and other cities). Maybe I should be outraged, but I'm really not.

Homeless advocates and poverty activists are speaking out, as they do, about callousness, cruelty and inhumanity (oh, and systemic racism, just for good measure). But living in a tent or one of those weird little box homes in a city park is not a good solution. Not only does it effectively leave the parks out of bounds for other users (at a time when other leisure activities and opportunities are still severely curtailed) and leads to gross littering and degradation of shared public spaces, but it can be downright dangerous and unsanitary for the campers, especially where toilet and shower facilities are not available. There have already been several fires, sometimes leading to severe injury or even loss of life. And, at the risk of sounding twee, it's just illegal, and laws are there for a reason.

The police operation has not been a callous and aggressive show of force; bodies are not being dragged away willy-nilly. It has been a patient, polite and respectful process, prefaced by an offer of safer housing in a shelter or hotel. Over half of the camp residents in Trinity Bellwoods Park, for example, have accepted the offers of alternative accommodation. Yes, there have been some instances of face-offs, mainly with the demonstrating poverty activists and their hangers-on, but these have generally been handled sensitively and well.

Toronto (and other cities) has put a lot of money into improving conditions in homeless shelters since the pandemic hit, and many new affordable and supported housing units have been added to the city's stock. Pandemic infection controls have been extended, and testing facilities stepped up. Vaccinations are now the rule not the exception. Sure, shelters are not ideal, but they are not as poor an option as they once were. A housing worker is being assigned by the City to each tent resident who is moved ou from the parks; no-one is being turfed out onto the streets and left to fend for themselves (unless they choose to do that, as I suppose some will always do).

So, call me callous and heartless. Call me a middle-class élite who just wants his middle-class parks back. But I still believe that, on balance, moving people out of these makeshift camps is the right thing to do.