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Front Page Story

Blanket Benjamins still out in cold

by Judi McLeod

September 30, 2002

While the displaced homeless of the evacuated Home Depot squat were being looked after by politicians at the City of Toronto’s geared-for-another-election year council chamber, the city’s unattended homeless languished in their blanket bundles, cardboard boxes, and in doorways throughout the entire city.

Benjamin, who lives on a pile of dingy blankets in a Bay Street bus shelter, was nonplussed about how the city could come up with $400,000 for "that bunch of young whippersnappers down on the waterfront."

There are scores of Benjamins scattered throughout the entire Greater Toronto Area, and most likely plenty of them too in your average American or European city.

They are the real down and out homeless. The ones too tired, drugged up, boozed up, bent, broken or too mentally challenged to participate in political experiments with city councillors like Jack Layton.

They are the ones never offered $500 a month toward the rent for an apartment. And that’s a real tragedy because the North American city, where Benjamin and his ilk maintain the piles of blankets they call home, is facing the onslaught of another long, cold Canadian winter.

The political perqs for the hardcore homeless are zero. Some of them out there now are the same ones who were huddled up against doorways even as the noisy political activists who claim to advocate their cause, marched right on by them during last winter’s homeless and poverty protests.

Like the many who eke an existence out on the street, the story of how Benjamin came to be there is sketchy.

"Okay, I had a wife, kids, a nice rented house and a job," he said.

Things started to go downhill when he had one scrape too many with the law. He says he hitchhiked to Toronto, had a few doors slammed in his face, and the rest as they say is sidewalk history.

A new friend has been buying him a hotdog and coffee from a nearby hotdog cart every day on his way home from the office. Enough coins from passersby keep him going.

According to Benjamin, who keeps in touch with his closest neighbours outside World’s Biggest Bookstore, "The word on the street is that nobody homeless has been invited into the King Street West pope squat, which I hear is getting bread from big unions."

For those reading from other parts of the world, the pope squat was an empty building at 1510 King W. taken over by squatters who occupied the property during Pope John Paul 11’s visit in July.

Supported by unions and social justice groups, the 15 individuals living in the squat have been renovating the building’s interior. The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), the group that took over the building, is said to be researching the takeover possibilities of dozens more.

The Home Depot squat, closed down last week, became Canada’s largest shantytown by design. Back in 1998, Layton, self-acclaimed defender of the homeless, approached a group of teenagers living in a derelict building. After convincing them to move one lot over to the Home Depot property, he brought them insulated tents. The tents led to wooden shacks, cars, the odd trailer and subsequently more than a hundred residents with a menagerie of pets.

The birth of two babies to Shantytown mothers accelerated its closing, as it had been built on contaminated lands posing health risks.

Egged on by Layton, his activist wife Coun. Olivia Chow and others, the Home Depot squatters, marched on city hall demanding replacement accommodation. The city and province responded with a new $400,000 rent subsidy in which the 100 or more squatters will get first and last month’s rent and $500 toward their rent on apartments.

Squalid as it was and contaminated lands notwithstanding, the Home Depot squatters had a better life than the Blanket Benjamins who number somewhere in the hundreds.

Along with several pets per family, some had televisions and computers.

Experts estimate that it costs approximately $1,500 a month to put an individual up in shelter. There’s merit to the argument that spent on affordable housing, it would give individuals not only a permanent roof over their heads, but get them started on the road to rebuilding their lives.

Meanwhile, Benjamin doesn’t expect to be rescued by the leader of any homeless advocate group or to be saved by any local politician.

"I dropped out of school Grade 5 in Nova Scotia when my father up and left," he said. "Living on the streets gives me no time for political action courses and the people who give me coins, don’t care, thank God, whether I keep up on local politics.

"There’s no home depot free squat for me. I got through life on the street last winter, and it looks like I’ll get by during this one."

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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