On “un/SHELTERED”

On January 20, I attended “un/SHELTERED: Finding Solutions, exploring housing solutions for people who are unhoused.”  This event took place at Beeton Hall of the Toronto Reference Library, co-sponsored by Maytree and West End Phoenix. Last year, they launched a design competition that sought housing solutions for people who are unsheltered.

I was intrigued by the title of this event as it recognized the derelict condition of our shelter system. Dan, one of our community members, described what it was like to secure a bed for the night in our shelter system that crowds over 60 people in a room with a tiny locker to put in all your belongings. He must have a ticket or voucher by 4pm to claim a bed by 8pm. At 4pm, sometimes there is only one or two tickets left, if at all. If he was offered an odd job to shovel snow or do some handy work some place, he must weigh the risk of losing that ticket/bed or losing that extra bit of income.

When I first heard of the design competition, with tongue-in-cheek, I submitted Dan’s “Cramper.” In 2019, Dan built a self-propelled camper from scraps of material, a recycled aluminum ladder as its base, new materials he bought with money he earned from doing odd jobs such as snow clearing and other materials, scraped off other people’s waste. Measuring about six feet long and tall and about 40 inches wide, made of plywood, insulation and plastic, and weighing about 100 pounds, “the cramper” also has wheels recycled from discarded bicycles. Its best features are a storage space up top for a sleeping bag, insulated walls, lights, a kettle to boil water for tea and heating, run through an extension cord.

There’s enough room inside for a bed that folds down with two sleeping bags on top, a camping toilet and heater (that needs a nearby outlet to be used), but not much else. Dan said, “My body heat with the small cabin size, it’s enough to heat the unit above 12-15 degrees warmer than it is outside so it’s bearable and that’s why I made ‘the cramper,’” It is not much but it provided liberty, privacy and a shelter.

The Cramper was a temporary design that was witnessed by a community that appreciated and supported it. Dan visited with many people in the community, in a practice known as êpêkiyokêyân. In an act of visiting, they became neighbours to him and he to them. People offered many items: a board, some foam, a single burner, a place to park and an outlet to plug in his extension cord.  A sense of community was created where what current structure offers have not worked, people, neighbours, offered something, much like the Stone Soup. They said “yes, in my backyard.” This is community.

The cramper is not a solution but a transmission of a vision of community.

I looked at the four designs that made it to the final round of the competition: The Shell, Village in a Box, Portable Steel Cabins and Pallet Communities in Parking Garages. While I marveled at their design, I pondered on the following, without asking them, as there was no Q&A:

Are these designs simply “glorified tents”?
Where are these designs going to be situated?
Are these designed to keep “them”, the unsheltered, out of sight?
Will these designs help us realize that there is no “them” but only us?


Wahkohtowin is a Cree word which denotes the interconnected nature of relationships, communities, and natural systems.

At the DPNCHC Spring Festival in May a few years ago, Arts4All gave a thought-provoking performance where they portrayed an early community of railroad workers, settlers, who lived with the indigenous people in this area in what was known as “Shackville.” That community had their own ecological system of growing their own food, furniture making, trading, until they were forced to amalgamate with the growing city of Toronto, where shacks were seen as unacceptable structures in the new mapping of Toronto.

Reading Walter Brueggemann’s January 26, 2023 article, “On Mapping”, he said that a map is an instance of power and control. In his reading of Jo Guldi’s, The Long Land War: The Global Struggle for Occupancy Rights (2021), he stated, “…participatory mapping consists in the landless becoming active agents in the construction of their own future, along with a refusal to be passive recipients of the “paper” imposed on them by reigning power.”

Too many developments that have crept in our cities have rendered Wahkohtowin impossible. We know that renoviction have splintered communities, families where houses are built not to house but be commodities, for investment, for the market. In renoviction, tenants have no security of tenure, a key part of the right to adequate housing, which is recognized in Canadian law.

When the Parkdale community created a land trust and purchased two rooming houses in their neighbourhood to prevent its tenants from eviction, Bread and Bricks invited James Partanen from Parkdale Community Land Trust to speak to our community in July 2022.

A land trust is an organizational structure where land is taken out of the market and is made available in perpetuity, keeping it permanently affordable for different users.

In 2024, with Rachel Butler and Andrew Costa, the Davenport Community Land Trust working group was formed, and its members are meeting regularly, to discuss the many issues surrounding getting a Davenport Community Land Trust.

The main reason why people have neither food to eat nor a home to live in is that they have no money. While social benefit rates have not increased, minimum wage is not a livable income. This is why we also campaign for a Guaranteed Livable Income. A Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) is a payment to individuals or families by government (federal and/or provincial/territorial) that covers the cost of necessities (food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and community participation) and is not conditional on meeting employment criteria to qualify for the benefit.

Since 1972, The United Church of Canada has advocated a policy of guaranteed annual income that is more equitable and less expensive and complicated to administer than the numerous government support programs presently available. Since then, national and international studies and programs have shown that a universal basic income is both affordable and has beneficial effects in the areas of health, justice, education, and social welfare.

A Guaranteed Livable Income, a Community Land Trust, are just two of the basic things we are advocating for at Davenport Perth Community Ministry. They are a way to make Wahkohtowin possible, and where we no longer need temporary shelters and designs where there is no longer any them, only us.