Tempers flared at a packed Wednesday night consultation over the city’s proposed new approach to managing the large homeless encampment in Dufferin Grove Park.
In February, the city will newly launch its so-called enhanced outreach model in the park — adding additional security staff, daily health and social support visits for residents, and waste removal — aimed at eliminating the encampment as soon as possible.
The approach has been used by the city to rid Clarence Square Park and Allan Gardens of longstanding encampments in recent months.
“What you’re seeing before you is a plan to transition people out of Dufferin Grove,” said Davenport Coun. Alejandra Bravo during the event, which took place at a local retirement home.
Some residents expressed gratitude for the new plan, but said it’s coming too late.
A neighbour with a visual impairment who lives close to the park with her two young sons told TorontoToday the encampment has made her unable to walk through the area at night.
“I feel unsafe,” she said. “I can’t see well enough to assess a situation as it’s happening.”
She said the tents in the park, which currently number about 20 and have been there for years, have also prevented her two children, aged 10 and 13, from enjoying the greenspace.
“[They’re] never going to get those childhood years back,” said Erin, who asked TorontoToday to use only her first name.
Criticism of the city’s new approach
During the consultation, some local residents took aim at their neighbours for overstating the danger of people living in encampments in the park.
One man argued that people are confusing “feeling uncomfortable [with] actually being unsafe.”
While one resident said there have been “verbal attacks” in the park as a result of the encampment, another resident said such challenges are the norm for city life.
“There’s also verbal attacks on Queen Street,” the person shot back.
A city resident who spoke with TorontoToday said the enhanced outreach model is not the right strategy, arguing the city should be taking far more dramatic measures to curb homelessness.
“I would be glad to see us declare homelessness a state of emergency, and then use the emergency powers to expropriate every single vacant unit in the city until everyone’s been housed,” said Ri, who asked TorontoToday use only their first name.
The consultation comes amidst a growing homelessness crisis impacting people provincewide.
In 2024, more than 80,000 people in Ontario experienced homelessness — up 25 per cent compared to 2022, according to a new report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
Additional security personnel in Dufferin Grove
As part of the new plan for Dufferin Grove Park, the city has dispatched security staff who will monitor the area all day, everyday.
“This makes sure that any issues or emergencies in the park are being reported immediately to my team,” said John Francisco, a manager with the City of Toronto’s encampment team, during a presentation at the consultation on Wednesday.
In addition, beginning in February, the park will be staffed with community safety personnel who wear yellow vests and are on-site to support encampment residents and neighbours, he said.
“If you feel unsafe walking into the park … you can even request for them to walk with you,” he added.
Milton Barrera, a City of Toronto director in the shelter division, said on Wednesday that there is no clear timeline for the resolution of the encampment.
“But what we do know is that the enhanced outreach model does work,” he said.
In using this approach with the Allen Gardens encampment, Francisco said on Wednesday that staff provided residents with 433 shelter referrals and helped 98 people get housed.
It took a while — 450 days — for the encampment to be completely dispersed, he added, but it came to an eventual conclusion without the use of force.
Barrera said it takes time for staff to develop relationships with encampment residents and that trust-building is important to get to a positive resolution.
“We’re not rushing people, we’re working with people — but there will be an end date in sight,” he told the crowd.
Nowhere to go?
However, current Dufferin Grove Park encampment resident Victoria Christopher told TorontoToday she is less optimistic than city staff that the approach will yield positive results.
“All the shelters are full here,” said Christopher, who attended Wednesday’s consultation.
The park resident said there is nowhere safe for her and her partner to go.
Occasionally, the pair are able to get space at the shelter for couples at 545 Lakeshore Road, but Christoper said there’s a lot of drug use there, which she doesn’t want to be around.
“There are no choices,” she said.
Others critical of the city’s enhanced support model agree.
After the encampment clearing of Clarence Square Park, Church of Saint Stephen-in-the-Fields Rev. Maggie Helwig told TorontoToday that residents cleared from the park normally quickly end up at another, smaller encampment.
“I think it is not nearly as constructive as the city portrays it as being,” said Helwig in December.
“When encampments are reduced in this way, people are not, on the whole, going into housing.”
The design of the enhanced outreach model is based on a strategy used initially to clear Dufferin Grove Park in 2021.
