[inline:1]June 21 - 4pm
Allan Gardens
Free Meal - Entertainment

Turf Wars: Low Income Neighbourhoods vs. Upscale Redevelopment

From 2004 to 2007, Tickets Under the Safe Streets Act have Increased 288%

As the grotesque oversupply of housing for the rich creeps into poor areas of the city, a ruthless drive to push out homeless people gathers force. People are targeted by cops. Those forced to beg on the streets are hounded and their civil liberties disregarded. Services to the homeless are curtailed by the city. Hundreds of shelter beds are taken out of the hostel system and the places that remain become overcrowded dangerous hell holes. Under the City's Streets to Homes project, homeless people are dumped in tiny rooms with no resources and no support, in conditions that make the shelters look humane. The War on Homeless People has grown uglier and gained in speed.

Defy the process of upscale development - join a takeover of a city park for the homeless. Help OCAP ensure that the covert plot to drive the homeless from view is made a public issue.

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OCAP Publication

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Includes information about:
- Park Takeover: June 21st, Allan Gardens
- Tyendinaga: Update on the Struggle for the Culbertson Tract
- McGuinty's Poverty Reduction Game
- Get the Police off our Streets!
- The City and Panhandling: A New Kind of Sweep
- Who Killed Paul Croutch?
- Housing not War
- The Everest Restaurant and Accessibility

Are they Trying or Lying?

The McGuinty Liberals have jumped onto the very overcrowded bandwagon of ‘Poverty Reduction’. They have set up a process of highly selective consultation to ‘define the problem’. Then, they tell us, they will ‘set targets’ to reduce poverty and implement a package of reforms to that effect. Implied in all this is an expectation that we should accept it as a good faith initiative. In fact, we are expected to play along and wait patiently for the eventual benefits that will, supposedly, flow from it.

Paul Croutch was beaten to death in Moss Park nearly 3 years ago. Like many of the homeless people on our streets, he was exposed to the elements, to the harassment of cops and the hate-filled attacks of strangers.

If you are a homeless man, you are nine times more likely to be murdered than a housed man.

We will not let Paul's death become a statistic. If Paul was housed, he would be alive today.

Housing For All.

Clich here for a really good Star article

Sign the Petition for a 40% Increase on Social Assistance in Ontario

View the Signatures

Under the Harris Tories and McGunity Liberals, hundreds of thousands of people in Ontario have seen the spending power of their social assistance cheques fall by 40%. People can only pay their rent by going without proper food. They can only put food on the table by facing the threat of eviction from their housing.

[inline:1]People are being turned away from shelters almost every night. Over the past 2 years, we have lost over 300 beds and this week we are losing 130 more. That is why we held an Out-Of-The-Cold shelter for one night on Sunday and why we went to City Hall to demand beds the next day. Miller
refused to let us into this Executive Committee meeting and refused to account for these devastating cuts. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that people have beds and meals in this city.

For the full article, click here

[inline:3]As part of our challenge to the neglect and abuse faced by Toronto Community Housing tenants, OCAP has been collecting up photographs of disrepair in TCH buildings. On March 26, we came to City Hall and put up a photo display that showed some of what we have seen around the City.

Right in the lobby of the City’s administrative centre, we let everyone see just how tenants have to live in the properties owned by the City of Toronto. Pictures showed the water damage that is eating into the units and common areas of high rise buildings in Mornell Court and Moss Park. They included a bathroom on Jamestown Crescent where the ceiling has caved in. A gaping hole over the shower of a tenant at 200 Sherbourne was shown. Petty neglect that could be dealt with easily was included. Outside one highrise building, a bench was pictured that had most of the boards that made up the seat missing.

Not for the first time, despite its very modest operating budget, OCAP faces a situation where it can't meet its basic operating costs. We have paid our rent for the month but can only pay Bell Canada by reducing the size of organizers' paycheques.

Yesterday, we organized a delegation to City Hall to confront the recent death of a homeless man in a downtown stairwell. A voice was raised to expose the shocking lack of emergency shelter that is putting lives at risk in the interests of upscale redevelopment. If you go to our website you can see part of a photo display that we are making up of the appalling conditions that public housing tenants face in Toronto Community Housing. We are mobilizing tenants to win repairs and making gains. A recent report by the City of Toronto on the Special Diet Supplement shows that $30 million a year is going to poor people on welfare since we took up the fight for this benefit. Prior to this, spending per year was a mere $2 million.

Note: Please see Robert Maurice's ex-wife's response below)

On March 4, OCAP held a protest in city council around the freezing death of a homeless Native man named Robert Maurice which had been reported in various media. Twelve days earlier OCAP, and a number of agencies attended a committee meeting to express our concerns about the closing of over 300 shelters beds, which has led to serious overcrowding in Toronto hostels. We expressed our anger at Mayor David Miller and city politicians who had remained silent around Robert’s death.

It was later discovered that although Robert had been homeless on and off for many years, he did have housing at the time of his death. Robert had been living in a private Habitat boarding home for psychiatric survivors since late summer 2006. He was forced to share a small room. We were told that up to thirty people lived in the house. Robert would have had very little privacy in that boarding home. Most of Robert’s income would have gone to pay for his room and board leaving him very little money.