I’m sorry but if the city does have unlimited funds, they should help everyone.
However with so little money, I do agree it’s better to spend on people with a future. Like the health system selects people for organ transplant, the city should choose better.
Also I do think there should be some public bathrooms for everyone to use. Just in case anyone needs it. That includes regular cleaning.
With the admonishment from
@ShonTron in mind......... I'd still like to politely and clearly address this.
Lets forget, for a moment, having a social or other conscience........... Lets make it hard math.
So, assuming you don't wish to advocate for intentionally causing harm...(which I trust you do not); we need to consider the following.
Leaving someone unhoused or untreated (properly) for addiction or mental illness results in the following adverse costs.
1) The disadvantaged souls themselves will end up in hospital ERs (they do now) for things ranging from gout, to frost bite, to dehydration to overdose.
These interventions are expensive. From a hospital accounting perspective (where you charge back the cost of overhead), every ER visit by anyone costs a minimum of 4k.
If you require medications, an extended stay/hospital admission, surgical or other interventions those costs can be vastly higher.
2) If these persons end up completely w/o shelter, they are either on the street, in a doorway, in a back alley or in a park. Putting aside the misery they may suffer as a result, there is an adverse economic impact. Coldly, it hurts tourism, the night economy, perceived public safety etc.
Interventions to get those folks off-the street, repeatedly, are also costly with teams of 2 or more professionals usually working together, often supported by police.
3) For a variety of reasons, some such persons will interact with the legal system, perhaps because of crimes they commit, but just as often as victims of same. Court time is expensive, jails are expensive.
4) If you do get them off the streets short term but don't address underlying health issues and/or don't permanently house them. Shelters run at over $6,000 per person per month. (24/7 staff and security are costly).
5) Delays experienced by riders on TTC are also costly in productivity and quality of life, completely apart from the cost of response to various incidents by TTC and Emergency personnel.
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The notion that if we 'cut people off' because they're hard to help we will 'save' money that can be redeployed on the deserving is simply incorrect, even with the coldest and harshest of assessments.
That does not mean that we can't employ different solutions/techniques than what we employ today, or that some of those might not be described as 'tough love'. But there is no case to be made for 'ostriching' and
imagining the problem will self-resolve through low to no intervention.
Kindness and altruism, by and large are profitable from a societal point of view. We should behave with kindness in any event; but the cold hard math still works in favour of that world view.
High quality intervention, including permanent housing, is the lowest cost, highest revenue, long term play.
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Edit to add: I don't think crisis teams at every station 18 hours a day is the most cost-effective or just plain effective use of dollars in the longer term. But as a short term play while we address the systemic and structural issues from housing to healthcare to platform edge doors, there's some sense to the effort, at least at stations known to experience inordinate challenges.
