In one of the most affluent cities in the world there are thousands of residents who do not have a place to call home.
Look up at the skyline, and it's clear that Toronto is booming, with new condos on every block, housing prices in the millions of dollars, but look down... on the street corners, and see another side of Canada's biggest urban centre-- homelessness. There are a thousand nameless citizens living and sleeping on the sidewalks. And they are dying there too.
The first semester students of Seneca’s Journalism program went out to the streets of Toronto to meet their fellow citizens and ask them to tell them their stories. As students walked the downtown streets they stopped to photograph, interview, and record the voices of their homeless denizens. They got to know Paul and Esther, Jeff and Frances, Aaron, and many others. “How did you end up on the streets?”, the students asked. “What would make your life better?”, they asked. “What message do you have for Mayor John Tory?”
Other students investigated the legalities of panhandling, the roots of homelessness, measured and analysed the statistics, documented the shortcomings of public shelters, and spoke to a front-line worker who said it’s time to declare a state of emergency.
The stories were assembled by a student web team to become the multimedia web feature, Walking Homeless.
