Is Etobicoke clueless or carefree about city’s shelter plan?
· Toronto Sun
Do the neighbours not know or do they just not care?
Residents in central Etobicoke are getting one of their last real chances to speak up about a homeless shelter set for Bloor St., just west of Kipling Ave. When city representatives show up at a church across the street from that site on Wednesday, Sobeida Duarte will be there, armed with a petition.
Visit forestarrow.help for more information.
“We’re playing the game. The only tools that the city gives us, we’re using (them),” Duarte told the Toronto Sun .
Years back, city hall reconfigured the once-overbuilt Six Points intersection, a jumble where Bloor meets Kipling and Dundas St. That freed up a lot of land close to Kipling station and there are big plans for development.
Former councillor consulting city on shelter
Joe Mihevc is the consultant the city hired to sell the public on the new shelter, just to the west of Six Points. A former city councillor, Mihevc is best known to most Torontonians these days as the vice-chair of the board for the TTC. (Asked by the Toronto Sun for comment, Mihevc referred all inquiries to the City of Toronto.)
Duarte leads the Wedgewood Neighbourhood Association , a small residents’ group less than a year old. She said similar groups elsewhere in Toronto have warned her they “didn’t get enough communication or discussions” before shelters went up.
“Apparently, when they do this consultation, it’s just to let you know – and they are going to go with the plan no matter what,” she said.
The city said the new shelter will be for women only and it fits with Toronto’s needs. Duarte, however, has concerns about crime, property values and discarded needles.
She said some longtime residents are staunchly opposed, but admitted there’s roughly a “half-and-half” split between those for and against the idea. Mostly, she said her neighbourhood is “so disengaged” from the issue.
RECOMMENDED VIDEO
Odd lack of engagement: Holyday
Her city councillor, Stephen Holyday, told the Toronto Sun he doesn’t get many complaints from constituents about the shelter – to the point that he finds it odd.
He knows the shelter planned for 66 Third St. in a neighbouring ward has been divisive , but hasn’t seen anything like that level of opposition in central Etobicoke. “I’m a little surprised by that,” he said, “because I know the community that I live in are vocal about things, as they should be.
“I would’ve thought I would’ve heard more from people just up the street and I didn’t – including people that I know in the community. I’m not sure what’s happening exactly.”
Part of the reason Duarte’s neighbours aren’t more focused on the shelter is that city hall kept it under wraps for so long.
Info on plans had been confidential
Holyday said when he learned about the plans in the middle of last year, he was told all information about it was confidential. He then wrote a letter to Gord Tanner, the city’s shelters boss, which he shared with the Toronto Sun .
That letter noted the confidentiality and urged Tanner to “immediately” hold off on acquiring the building until the public had been consulted. Holyday then made the unusual move of requesting documents related to his own meeting via freedom-of-information law so he could freely tell constituents about the plan.
“None of that worked out for me and they ended up accelerating the purchase timeline” for the property, Holyday said.
While there was a meeting in August, Holyday said the city missed the mark on consulting the public early on. He provided the Toronto Sun with a brochure from last year that asked residents to contact Mihevc – someone well versed in city policy – at a Gmail address rather than an official toronto.ca one.
The site is a former seniors’ home connected to a strip mall. It’s a small building but the city intends to increase it to four storeys with a capacity of about 60, opening in 2028 or so.
Meeting the last chance?
Increasing the size of the building will require rezoning. Because of that, the city will host a meeting Wednesday evening from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at nearby St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church to get feedback from the public – but Holyday said it’s only for issues related to the building itself, not the building’s use.
Duarte said she’ll be there with a hard copy of a petition to be signed, while a digital version is available online .
Some in the area are expecting a lukewarm response. A representative from another local neighbourhood group, the Islington Ratepayers and Residents Association, said that while they haven’t heard much feedback, the response they’ve received about the shelter has been clearly positive.
A city hall representative told the Toronto Sun that its blueprint for consultation has worked elsewhere in Toronto and said the municipality is “committed to engaging with neighbours” to best integrate shelters into the community.
Holyday, however, suggested Duarte is correct that the shelter’s representatives probably already have their minds made up.
“Be careful with the word consultation, right? Because they’re careful with it,” he said. “They’re not looking for people’s opinions. They’re looking for what narrow input that they can glean off of this.”