My business is too difficult. My business is trying to arouse human pity. There are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work. So it happens, for instance, that a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time that he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll hand him over cold-bloodedly to the police. – Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera
Are we numbed to homelessness? I hesitate to say yes.
I recently used the phrase ‘Toronto’s dirty little secret’ to describe reports of homeless people turned away when the city’s five warming centres were full.
I use the term ‘dirty little secret’ because most of the impoverishment, pain and suffering, humiliations of people without housing takes place behind the closed doors of shelters.
While there is a growing awareness of the extent of homelessness across the country, a new report in Ontario suggests over 80,000 are homeless, what do we really know, or see?
Many years ago, one of my Canadian heroes took this question seriously. Bruce Mcleod, former Moderator of the United Church of Canada and a minister at Metropolitan United Church in the 1980s was a columnist at the Toronto Star. I grew up in the United Church and in my early years of activism I came to know McLeod as a social justice champion on issues such as fighting the return of the death penalty.
In early winter 1987 his column “A night at a men’s hostel” provided first hand witness to mostly unseen conditions in the largest men’s shelter in North America. Without pomp and circumstance, McLeod entered Seaton House (still known as Satan House by those who have stayed there) to sleep overnight – or to try to.
In his column he wrote:
“The bare mattress was covered with a tough rubberized canvas. I propped my borrowed coat beneath my head. I kept my shoes on. The iron bunks are about two feet apart. The upper ones are high; one man tried three times to swing himself up before he made it. There was not enough air. With snores and gasps, heaving lungs vainly strained for oxygen. The stench of sweat, smoke, vomit, urine and unwashed socks was overpowering.”
In a follow-up column “Why Metro homeless are also in bad health” he added:
“People without homes cannot rest and take plenty of fluids. They do not eat well. They suffer higher infant mortality, more heart attacks and cancer.”
McLeod then elaborated on urban crowding drawing a straight line between lack of ventilation, privacy and personal space and measurable physical, mental or social impairment. How prescient he was given the impact of shelter conditions today and what we know about infectious diseases ranging from COVID to Norwalk to Shigellosis.
Not leaving his columns to just the circumstances he had witnessed, McLeod then used his newspaper space to invite readers to a forum on the Effects of Homelessness on Health sponsored by the Toronto Union of Unemployed Workers with a panel of nine (including McLeod) chaired by then city councillor Jack Layton.
I attended the inquiry, and was roused by its witnesses, many of whom were staying at Seaton House and other downtown shelters. Not long after I became a street nurse.
I tell this story because most research or attempts to inform policy makers and the public can never adequately portray the inner recesses of shelters. But witnessing in more dynamic forms can. That’s what Bruce McLeod did.
Over the years colleagues and I endeavoured to show what is invisible, not to arouse a ‘threepence’ of pity but to arouse compassion and action.
In early 2002 I learned the necessity of making visible the invisible. Shelley Saywell, an internationally respected documentary filmmaker, had been refused the opportunity to shoot inside a Toronto shelter for the film Street Nurse (yes I’m in it). Unbeknownst to me she outfitted Dri, a Tent City activist, with a hidden camera in his ball hat. Thank goodness she did. The footage showed an overcrowded basement shelter, lights kept on all night, bodies lying on the ground (no cots or beds). The moral dilemma here was that the footage showed a fire trap with over 120 people inside and it was imperative we not wait for the film release to make the footage public. Before releasing the footage to the media, we showed it to a few prominent Canadians who provided their own public witness.
John Andras, vice president of the Rotary Club of Toronto and vice president of Research Capital: “I was reminded of pictures showing the lower decks of slave ships.”
Judy Rebick, writer and producer: “If cats and dogs were living in the conditions shown in this secret video, people would be up in arms. How can we tolerate homeless people in Toronto sleeping in conditions worse than a UN refugee camp?”
Dr. Stephen Hwang, Population Health Epidemiologist, St. Michael’s Hospital: “The severe crowding in this shelter is clearly a risk to the health of the individuals forced to live in this situation and creates conditions that pose a public health risk through the spread of TB and other infectious diseases.”
Over the years, it has been necessary to use secret video as an advocacy tool.
At times it involved renting a camera from a spy shop and going undercover with a documentary filmmaker. Another time a freelance photojournalist volunteered to capture footage inside the warming centres, a 100 person 24/7 respite Sprung structure and a 200+ person respite site on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition.
During the pandemic, unhoused people did their own secret photography, sending crowded shelter pics to advocates. Several by Brian Cleary appear in Displacement City. Fighting for Health and Homes in a Pandemic.
The footage/stills when released to the media nearly always resulted in shelter improvements.
You have likely noticed these were amateur efforts.
A few years ago, amidst two particularly gruesome winters, the Toronto Ombudsman was investigating winter drop-in conditions and winter respite shelters. I was working a lot with a well-respected investigative journalist who was ready to do a ‘McLeod’ overnight but was stopped by lawyers at their news agency. Issues of ethics and privacy were given as the reasons. I remember being stumped at that logic given news agencies of all stripes were known to do undercover work. Recent examples include the dangers temp agency workers face in factories, conditions in nursing homes, more accessibility barriers on Air Canada, The CBC show Marketplace is perhaps the best known example of this exemplary investigative reporting that influences public policy, protecting health and lives.
So today, as societal shock is numbed and seemingly no longer has the power to influence politicians, criminalization as a solution becomes the go to standard for homelessness. As Eleanor Wand has pointed out in her recent news article some governments are now resorting to the more cold-blooded policing response of ticketing and removing encampments, introducing legislation to fine and police people who are still outdoors, if necessary enacting the notwithstanding clause.
The business of arousing human compassion (not pity) needs a bit of a boost, and I would suggest some serious investigative truth-telling McLeod style journalism.
As March Soriano, a homeless man who was offered a spot in a congregate-style shelter told the Toronto Star “I’d rather go on the street than go in there.”
We need to be shown why.
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