Week Three, May 18, 2025: the tents

For five years, with a few breaks, there have been quite a few people living in tents at Dufferin Grove Park. The most recent wave started late last summer, went through the fall, right through the cold winter, and is still ongoing. The Toronto Shelter and Support office reported that there were 13 people living in 28 tents on Feb.1. This went down to 9 people. As of the May long weekend, there were two new tents -- so perhaps 11 people live there now.

new large tent, May 18

new smaller tent, May 17, near the school

Starting last December, community concern about the tents got stronger. Several tents in the fall caught fire, although no one was injured. As winter went on, the warming campfires at the south campfire area became almost nightly party spots for non-campers as well, and there were fights. On Jan.2, two sets of security guards were contracted by the city to patrol Dufferin Grove around the clock: 2 staff from Gardaworld, and 2 staff from One Community Solutions. So four at a time since the beginning of the year.

City Councillor Bravo held an in-person community meeting about the encampments on January 8, with more than 200 people attending. She held a virtual meeting on April 29, with over 100 people registered.

City staff have emphasized that they are following City Council direction by not forcing campers to leave. The city's Interdivisional Protocol for Encampments was passed by City Council in July 2024. Even so, Parks staff cleared the campfire area at the end of April, and encouraged the circle of campers who were near the circle garden to move their tents over to the west of the park's centre path. Also, until the new tent (photo above) appeared on May 17, there were no longer any tents at the southern part of the park, near the permit picnic area and the Montessori school on Sylvan.

Food, socks, clothes: the park gets twice a week visits from the "Mobile Jewish Response to Homelessness" (MJRH) outreach van, operated by Ve'ahavta, a Jewish humanitarian organization. The Ripple Community Collective has been able to use the Rink building kitchen for no fee on Mondays, for their volunteers to make a meal for the campers and also to run a free store, mostly for clothes. Other pop-up groups come to help or drop off supplies from time to time.

Housing: Campers are offered shelter or hotel spaces, but many try to avoid these large settlements of closely monitored strangers with curfews. Encampment staff have been working with people in tents to get their paperwork in order, so that they can have Ontario Works or ODSP benefits. This means that more campers now have some money to pay rent. But they say that even with rent money it's very hard to find a place to live.

137 Havelock St.

137 Havelock

Right across the street from the lower east entrance to the park is a white building that used to be a boarding house (until 2000) with a cafeteria kitchen. It is listed as having 12 bedrooms and 9 full bathrooms. It seems to have been empty for about 25 years. In 2019, Celos tried to find out more, but after much correspondence including an FOI request, we came up empty. Link.

But now there is some news:

The City of Toronto posts a list of licensed/applied for rooming houses: in Ward 9, there are 16 licensed rooming houses and 6 applications pending, including one for 137 Havelock. link

Opponents of having tents in parks, as well as people supporting their right to camp there, have all emphasized that people in tents need housing. It turns out that there is enough empty housing right across the street, for every person now living in the park.

Simple? Or out of the frying pan into the fire?

More information