City crews clean up a homeless encampment in Rosedale valley. PETER BIESTERFELD.
“Sometimes we miss the point about what the problem is and what we should be doing about it,” says Stephen Gaetz, president of the York University-based Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, one of the largest research institutes on the issue in the country. “We make all this investment in warehousing people, yet we know from research that it creates pathways to worsening life conditions.”