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We should look beyond the tents in our public spaces and see people deserving of compassion and dignity.

Encampments in Trinity Bellwoods Park, downtown Toronto. Credit: Lisa Byers Credit: Lisa Byers

Like many metropolises in Canada, it is part and parcel of city-living to brush past fellow urbanites living in makeshift campsites. Since last year, Toronto’s tent encampments increased 20 per cent with over 15,000 Torontonians living in the streets since last October. According to a 2024 Street Needs Assessment survey, Toronto had reached ‘crisis’ level homelessness.

Most of these encampments are spread across parks, under bridges, over subway grates, in ravines, and are sometimes found in other conspicuous pockets around the city.

One of these pockets is outdoor elevators. There are two that sit a few blocks away from where I live, both connecting an overhead passageway so pedestrians can avoid the long walk-around to get from one side of the neighbourhood to the other due to railway lines that run through the middle. Unhoused individuals are often found sleeping inside these elevators – with or without a tent, to embrace the warmth of an indoor heater during the brutal Canadian winters.

I have witnessed people semi to fully unconscious in these elevators, often spaced out on whatever drug of choice was on hand to manifest a brief exoneration from their harsh existence. It is common for those who struggle with mental health issues and have no support system to end up on the streets, and it is also common for those who end up on the streets to develop a mental health issue.

Substance abuse is indeed higher among those who experience chronic homelessness (those living unhoused for six months or longer). In Government Canada’s third annual Everyone Counts 2020-2022 study, mental health issues and substance use are the most prevalent health challenges reported for over 40,000 respondents who experienced housing loss.

The link between homelessness and drug use has propelled city advocates to push for drug consumption sites, which have proven to save lives, and an Ontario judge’s recent injunction preventing the provincially mandated closure of 10 supervised consumption sites is a hopeful development.

Many Canadians are concerned, however, and perhaps rightly so, of the danger of drug use occurring nearby schools or playgrounds, often from individuals living without shelter. In July 2023, a mother of two was killed by a stray bullet in a crossfire near a drug consumption site in the east end of the city, sparking community outrage to remove drug consumption sites at least 200 metres away from schools and daycares.

The most recent pushback against support for the unhoused came from the Toronto Standard Condominium Cooperation who is suing Sanctuary Ministries TO, a charity drop-in centre for the unhoused and underhoused, for $2.3 million. Despite a housing crisis exacerbated by economic volatility, individuals lacking housing security are being criminalized by a public entity that dictates what it means to have a roof over one’s head while advancing their power over property rights.

Encampments in Trinity Bellwoods Park, downtown Toronto. Credit: Lisa Byers.

Sentiment towards Toronto’s unhoused communities often oscillate between disdain and mercy. I once overheard a woman pass by a man in a sleeping bag by the elevators and mumble “yet another problem I have with this f—— country.” I grappled with her comment, which felt like a blunt force against the tender, vulnerable underbelly of our society. Was she referring to the homelessness crisis as an eyesore, an inconvenience, or a danger to her shared public space amidst an opioid crisis? All the above?

The ‘get a job’ axiom aimed at people living on the streets is also used as an attempt to blame the individual for a lack of accountability, as if their life circumstance is a heavy weight that is theirs alone to carry. This refusal to see an alternate reality through the eyes of another creates a palpable, even impenetrable shield as a means of keeping one’s suffering at arm’s length as an act of self-preservation. But this pretense does nothing but fuel a sense of ‘othering’ where we treat other people as inherently different from ourselves in a way that fosters prejudice and at its worst, tribalism.

I’ve also witnessed a shift from derision for the unhoused to absolute benevolence. My parents once came across a woman camped out by those same outdoor elevators by my place on their way back from the local Metro. They stopped by her tent to drop off some blueberry muffins, my mom offering an ‘I love you’ to the woman inside her tent, who responded with an ‘I love you too.’ The next day, the police had surrounded the area, mentioning that the women had passed away during the night from an overdose.

That same year, I had met an unhoused man named Marquee. Like many Canadians, he had lost his job during the pandemic and subsequently, his house. Marquee was moving from shelter to shelter, and ended up starting his own YouTube series called The Hungry Hobo on Canada’s Foodie Club. As a way of helping his fellow kin, he documents where to eat, where to get clothes and have a proper shower through the eyes of someone living on the streets. I’ve bumped into Marquee twice now: the first time he offered me (and my dog) chicken skewers he was cooking on a portable barbecue, and the second time he was collecting winter jackets and clothes that had been donated to re-distribute them to other unhoused Torontonians like him.

For some, there is an understanding that the venerable quality of being human is what keeps us connected and rooted in communal belonging, and it is in recognizing that because we all suffer, we are tethered by this commonality. There really isn’t much that separates us from this reality. Our survival depends on social cooperation, and without it, we fall prey to the illusion of universal separateness. In other words, we do not – and will not, get very far on our own.

People will tell you to put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others. But if you have the means to, don’t forget to consider assisting your neighbour. They may thank you for it and offer you a chicken skewer, too.

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Lisa Byers comes from a mixed background of advertising, research, and community engagement, having worked and volunteered for the likes of Leo Burnett, Ogilvy, United Nations, McGill University and Ipsos... More by Lisa Byers