Who are the TRDC?
The Toronto Disaster Relief Committee (TDRC) is a group of social policy, health care and housing experts, academics, business people, community health workers, social workers, AIDS activists, anti-poverty activists, people with homelessness experience, and members of the faith community. It provides advocacy on housing and homelessness issues. It has declared homelessness as a national disaster, and demands that Canada end homelessness by implementing a fully-funded National Housing Program through the One Percent Solution.
The TDRC asks: why is this human crisis not treated in the same way as other crises or disasters where people lose their housing and have their family and community networks disrupted, like the ice storm in Quebec and Eastern Ontario, or like the floods in Manitoba? Why are governments not responding to the physical and mental harm, including death, caused by being homeless? Why are they ignoring the spread of disease such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis? Why is it that our public officials fail to recognize that tens of thousands of people without housing and without adequate food and health care constitutes one of the largest and most serious national disasters that Canada has ever faced?
The TDRC believes that homelessness is a serious human rights violation.
For more information, please visit the website of the TDRC