Written by Jack Layton
Reviewed by Penny Costoglou
Published March 2002
Today, the government has put a halt to constructing low-cost housing. Jack Layton works against the norm. That is, he struggles to work against public indifference to the problem of homelessness. Today the homeless are banished from our society and left to anguish on their own, like they did before. Writing about homelessness is good, but acting on it is even better.
Layton gives a definition of homelessness that points to the heart of the problem. He says that “homelessness is a social construction and a result of our collective actions as a society or artifact.” (p. xxi). In other words, Layton takes the blame away from the homeless individual and places the blame on society’s actions of greed and recklessness against the homeless.
To further explain the economic traumas that the homeless face, Layton’s book provides us with (hard to get a hold of) statistics about homelessness and individual stories to describe homelessness. Layton says that it’s not easy for the homeless individual to “pull his pants up by his straps” without government and corporate intervention. Big Brother’s focus though is on giving personal tax cuts to the rich, instead of building low-cost housing for low-income citizens.
Who are the homeless? Today the homeless can come from many sectors of society. According to Layton, the homeless are the unemployed, the illiterate, the mentally ill, the offenders, the new immigrants, and the substance abusers. To describe homelessness is to view it like a Greek tragedy. The actors of this tragedy are the sick, the poor, and the marginalized individuals. The stage is set amidst a materialistic background, desensitized to the plight of the poor. The collective actions of the rich breed intolerance, degradation, ignorance and denial that result in vulnerable people being stigmatized. The plot usually ends with the homeless being institutionalized, incarcerated, evicted and living on the streets, sleeping in park benches, bus shelters, bridges, cars, garages, makeshift tents and emergency shelters for the homeless.
Furthermore, in Layton’s book, “collective actions” that cause homelessness, refers to the fact that “All other OECD Nations and our NATO allies have national housing strategies while Canada has none.” (p. 196). In addition, the “National Housing Act in Canada has been abandoned by the federal government, and it has been amended several times.” (p. 153). This means that the government has caused a panic among the homeless who are looking for low-cost housing. In fact, “there are 100,000 people in Toronto on a waiting list for housing that would take 18 years to satisfy their needs for housing. (p. 99).
A different “collective action” that Layton refers to is when psychiatric hospitals deinstitutionalize the mentally ill hoping they will find housing and support. Unfortunately, when there is a shortage of low-cost housing, consumer survivors end up on the streets where they do not get the necessary needs to live a fruitful life.
Because the government is slow at producing successful results on the problem of homelessness, Layton’s intentions (in my opinion) are to: inform and educate the public about government’s ‘dirty little secret’, to advocate for housing for the homeless, to dispel the myth that the homeless have no one to blame but themselves, and to speed up any government decision-making on National Housing Policy by exposing the problem to the public.
When will justice prevail for the homeless? Layton describes some actions taken by grassroots activists and a handful of politicians to help alleviate the problem of homelessness.
