Dear Mayor David Miller and Deputy Mayor Joe Pantalone,
I am deeply saddened to hear the news of the death of two men in our city. As reported by the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) on July 15, 2008, "On Monday, July 7, around supper time, a young Somali man in his mid-twenties was found dead in the Salvation Army Maxwell Meighen Hostel. On Thursday morning, July 10, Denis Bowen, 42, a native man known to many of us in the community, died outside a social housing building at 200 Sherbourne Street."
As we are all aware, these deaths were entirely preventable. Though I know the City is faced with budget shortfalls and funding cutbacks, we need to as a city find solutions to the crisis of homelessness. Of course strategies require financial support but they also require political commitment from leaders such as yourselves. Moreover, they require radical re-imaginings of our purposes and potential as government officials and as citizens. In what kind of a world can we sit idly by as comrades and colleagues die on the street? There are no excuses that can explain away the lives of these two men...or the thousands of others living on the streets, in unstable or unsafe accommodations or in substandard public housing.
You are currently promoting your campaign to get guns off the streets and make Toronto safe but it appears that even when guns aren't involved our city isn't safe for the poor and homeless. I am calling on you as elected officials to make eradicating homelessness in Toronto the top priority of City Council immediately.
We don't need any more Council Sub-Committees or staff reports. We need safe, clean, affordable places to live and we need them now.
Yours,
Stacy Douglas
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