Policymakers Will Crowdfund for Unhoused Politicians But Won't Address Systemic Problems

When ex-city councilor and MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti found himself down on his luck and unhoused, he found himself in one of Toronto’s homeless shelters.

“I never thought this would have happened to me, but it happened,” he thought.

He wouldn’t have to stay in that precarious situation for long. He raised over $45,000 through GoFundMe donations from other politicians to help him secure housing. But most people who find themselves unhoused don’t have a community at the ready to get them out of poverty.

The CBC, National Post, and Toronto Star treated the news as a feel-good story. The outlets failed to interrogate why people need to turn to crowdfunding in the first place when they’re down on their luck.

Last year alone, more than 80,000 people in Ontario were unhoused — with almost half living in shelters or on the street for more than six months.

Of the 80,000, about 45% were Indigenous, 12% were children ages 0 to 15, and 11% were youth aged 16 to 24. People with disabilities are also much more likely to live in poverty and four times more likely to become unhoused. The monthly payments from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) are well below the poverty line.

The current approach of looking the other way, destroying encampments, and expecting the problem to disappear aren’t working. A shortage of shelter capacity and empathy further perpetuates the problem.

It would cost the province less money to get people into stable housing. Speaking with individuals affected by poverty and housing insecurity could help the province figure out solutions that actually work. 

A Housing First approach, for example, focuses on providing rent subsidies and other support services for disabilities and mental health conditions. Rather than requiring an individual to recover fully from whatever mental health challenges they’re experiencing, this approach aims to transition them into stable housing right away.

This approach costs less than paying for emergency services and interventions for people with severe mental health problems who are unhoused. Researchers say it can provide permanent housing for people who are currently unhoused, and it won’t cost more than the current slate of solutions which already fail to get people into permanent housing.

Finland used the Housing First approach to reduce the number of people who are chronically unhoused by 68% between 2008 and 2022.

But we don’t have any politicians within the province loudly championing better policy or admitting that the current crisis is caused by policy failures. It is far more convenient to highlight the rare cases of well-connected people like Berardinetti who are able to crowdfund their way to housing.

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I'm a science and health journalist who is disappointed and fed up with the lack of news coverage surrounding Long COVID, ME/CFS, chronic illness, and disability issues in Canada. I decided to start this newsletter to provide a home for the news stories that don’t get coverage in Canada’s news ecosystem.