Toronto Drop-In NetworkDrop-In News - Mobile COVID-19 Testing at Encampments a Success

We are grateful to hear that the community of Church of the Holy Trinity had a successful, culturally-sensitive COVID-19 testing event through a fantastic partnership with Women's College Hospital and the Toronto Urban Native Ministry. Church of the Holy Trinity has been the site of a growing encampment outside of its doors because of the sense of safety their space provides to people experiencing homelessness. The success of this event is important, because it is a recognition of the health and welfare of people within these settings, and that they are rights-holders and human beings deserving of the same level of care as any other Torontonian. We offer our support and well wishes to the community member that tested positive for COVID-19, and are grateful to hear that they are no receiving recovery support. Our understanding is that this person came to Holy Trinity specifically for testing, and that they had been residing in the shelter system.

We have also heard that a similar testing event held at Sanctuary yielded only one positive COVID-19 result from a staff person who is asymptomatic or presymptomatic. Again, we offer our support and well wishes to this individual.

We have long advocated for people experiencing homelessness to be able to stay in encampments, understanding that this is a viable means to self-isolate as necessary, and remain among a chosen community that offers safety and protection. Many people staying in encampments are racialized, and many are women. Beyond not wanting to stay in Toronto shelters, where the infection rate is 18 times higher than that of the average Torontonian, is reason enough, but we also know that BIPOC people and women, women-identified people, and transfolk are often the targets of violence and harassment in the shelter system. Among the combined populations of Holy Trinity and Sanctuary, only two people tested positive for the virus ?— again, one individual who was staying in the shelter system, and one staff member. This is a strong indication that encampments are not the sites of danger and contagion that the City of Toronto has painted out them to be, but rather sites that are significantly safer than a bed in the shelter system.

In addition to this great news, we are also proud to stand alongside the Shelter and Housing Justice Network, OCAP Toronto, Parkdale Queen West Community Health Centre, Toronto Overdose Prevention Society, Street Nurses Network, the Interfaith Coalition to Fight Homelessness, and Faith in the City to sign on to a letter addressed to City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who has been advocating for the clearing of encampments and the increase of police in her ward (and specifically Moss Park). Our demands of her are this:

1. Publicly renouncing the clearing of encampments;
2. Advocating for a moratorium on the clearing encampments;
3. Protecting the racialized individuals, Indigenous peoples and women who constitute almost all of those living in the Park. Contact Staff Sergeant Todd Gowan from the Community Response Unit at 51 Division, as well as senior police staff and tell them not to increase their presence in the Park but to scale it back;
4. Demanding the City support those sleeping in encampments with food, water and safety supplies that would be distributed through its outreach teams;
5. Calling for the City to immediately implement the findings form the Faulkner Inquest;
6. Advocating for the opening of thousands of hotel rooms for those sleeping in encampments and in crowded shelters that do not allow for social spacing, and proper hygiene practices.

Again, we express our solidarity with people living in encampments and their right to remain in them when faced with no better options. Our municipal government needs to understand that their failure to house people should never result in the punishment of those unhoused; it's not only illogical, it's unethical, and denies people experiencing homelessness their basic humanity and rights.