There is a great deal of public outcry to legally ban panhandling altogether from our streets. City Councilor Case Ootes wants Toronto to institute a ban on panhandling in officially designated tourist areas like Yonge and Dundas Streets. This attitude just goes to reinforce the notion that if we don’t have to look at beggars, then it means that we don’t have any.

Instead of trying to legally end panhandling, why don’t we start to address the real problems like affordable housing, the costs of daycare, disability payments, and appropriate medical care for the mentally ill who have fallen through the cracks and are out on the streets begging?

Isn’t it time we faced up to our big city problems and tried to fix them? However there are those among us who think that “those people” choose to be homeless and that they are lazy and don’t want to work. We’ve all heard and read the stories about the few who are making a really good tax free income from panhandling. But these people are the exceptions to the rule, just as the people who get welfare and disability payments that they don’t deserve. Do you really think that homeless people choose to live in filth and squalor on the streets, cold and hungry? Would it shock you to know that according to the Housing and Homelessness Report Card 2003 that 31,985 homeless individuals (including 4,779 children) stayed in a Toronto shelter at least once during 2002?

For the full report click the link below.

http://www.toronto.ca/homelessness/

Do you really think that laws will make over 30,000 homeless people disappear? What do you think that we should do about this growing problem?