Outside the Church of the Holy Trinity in Toronto there is a memorial to all the homeless people who have died in the city. Frontline workers and friends have been counting for at least twenty years. The list now has one thousand names. One thousand siblings, parents, children, lovers, friends, many of whom spent the final days of their lives huddled on sidewalks as commuters stepped around them on their way to work. They died in a city awash in money with a skyline dominated by skyscrapers, where condos crowd out more of the daylight with each passing year. There are more than a million empty homes in this country, and on any given night at least thirty-five thousand Canadians are homeless. They pack into overflowing, often dangerous shelters, or they hunker down outside, hoping the elements will be kinder to them than the conditions indoors. Some of them never wake up. Most politicians treat urban homelessness as a permanent and intractable tragedy. They speculate and wring their hands while men and women freeze to death.

Michael Enright

Sunday Morning

CBC Radio

January 26, 2020