Comments and questions about the SAP data

It appears that the Toronto Shelter and Support (TSSS) system cost just under $1 billion in 2023. And then $200 million less in 2024. Is that reduction real?

Two months ago, the city auditor was less than happy with the gaps in the SAP documentation for parks maintenance. I bet she would find the same situation at TSSS, for example:
Police "interdivisional charges" to TSSS, in 2023: $10,595.
Police "interdivisional charges" to TSSS, in 2024: $626,071.
I'm guessing the difference is just sloppy book-keeping. And at the citywide scale, it's no wonder.

Beyond that, at the June 10 2025 Economic and Community Development Committee meeting, City Councillor Bravo said she wants a complete inventory of homelessness services by October, because the issue affects almost every city department. She listed:
TTC
Transportation
Toronto Public Library
Shelter
Social Development
Public Health
Fire
Ambulance.

Some but by no means all the associated costs are listed under "interdivisional charges" in the FOI response. So the real cost is more.

Questions arising from public discussion so far:

1. what's the "value for money" in all this expenditure?

2. how many of the people in shelters are not suited for any kind of standard housing? (It's been said that the people in tents could be put up at a fancy hotel for the money that's spent -- not if the hotel owners have anything to say about it)

3. Should those "unhousable" people go into locked treatment facilities? Or back into standard prisons, the road that was taken after the mental hospitals unlocked their doors?

4. If yes, to make the additional spaces needed, would the current hotels be re-jigged as locked facilities? With mandatory medication?

Oh dear! Back to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- ?

The Star ran a piece on June 9, about what happened when there was a concentration of hard-to-house encampment people, here. (I copied it because of the paywall.) Note that this is one reason why the campers won't go there.

I can't imagine how to get closer to solutions without looking at particular cases. Which means neighbours talking to campers and vice versa.

Rec staff did that for years when we had campers at the park. Remember? Then starting in 2012, those rec staff were eliminated. And then in 2020 public spaces were locked down, with no park staff at all for two years.

From the early days of the "Afro-Indigenous Uprising" in 2020 (it was neither Afro nor Indigenous) -- until a month ago -- I've still been talking to campers, whoever would talk to me (maybe half).

BUT: there's a paywall between city staff and neighbours, silos everywhere. And currently most neighbours (on both sides of the ideological divide!) won't talk to the campers. And most of the campers won't talk to the neighbours. City staff won't talk forthrightly to non-staff, PLUS different Divisions often don't/won't talk to each other either.

And given the chaos at Parks and Rec, and the unresolved local staffing situation, I've withdrawn from Dufferin Grove anyway. So I'm not even the small-time bit player that I was.

Where will this all go?

Jutta