In September 2024, Ontario Premier Doug Ford stood before the cameras at a new housing construction site in Cobourg, Ont., and said that the homeless needed to get off their “A-S-S and start working.” Advocates saw the remark as a clear statement of where Ford — then six years in office — stood on the province’s worsening homelessness and overdose crisis. Then, last spring, Ontario passed a law allowing fines of up to $10,000 or six months in jail for people consuming illegal substances in public places. In November, when protesters in the legislature tried to shout down voting on Bill 60 — which critics say makes it easier to evict tenants — Ford yelled at them to go “find a job.”

These are just two examples of legislation Ford’s government has passed that advocates says further marginalize unhoused people and those with substance abuse issues and make the work of related nonprofits harder. These legal changes come amid a growing emergency: according to Public Health Ontario, between 2018 and 2022 annual numbers of accidental drug and alcohol deaths in Ontario rose 68 percent.

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Greg Cook, a longtime outreach worker at Sanctuary Toronto, a homeless drop-in centre, says that the Ford government is trying to reframe addictions and mental health as an individual responsibility, rather than a community one. “It takes the responsibility off the government,” Cook says. “Control the narrative, stay responsible to property owners. Make it about property owners versus non-property owners. The homeless are seen as the ‘bad guys’ rather than as the most harmed people in our community.”

The board of a neighbouring condo building sued Sanctuary last fall for $2.3 million, claiming that the organization is creating an unsafe street and failing to address neighbourhood trespassing. The city has already fenced off the parkette beside Sanctuary, making it inaccessible to Sanctuary clients and the general public.

Organizations like Sanctuary, while not supervised consumption sites, provide another haven for vulnerable people at a time when........

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