As someone who has spent a lifetime working with kids who statistically are likely to end up homeless (and I say with some pride that my guy's almost always dont) the problem is you have to set some boundaries, you cannot assume 'well if me and my neighbours were homeless we'd live in tents and it would be fine' the homeless on the DTES are severely compromised, their mental health and drug issues mean tent cities become a magnet for drug use, violence and exploitation and suck more and more people in from the rest of Canada, I have a kid I worked with back from Halifax who hitched back to Vancouver specifically to live in his tent on the DTES because to his mentally ill drug addicted mind it was a great place to get high and party
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