some tweaks to the comments form

So the comments form has been increased in height so you don't have to scroll around to do the image picking authentication thing, so the anonymous commenting can be easier.

So the available info about soup kitchens has gotten even worse

It's unbelievable. TDIN has actually gotten worse. They've totally hidden their list and calendar on their website. Can't even find it anymore to help with this listing. So now, this totally outdated, incomplete list that's never been more inaccurate, is the easiest place to find this info. That's fucked.

So a concerted effort will be made this year to get things back up to speed. Just crazy that it's actually gotten worse while this site has been laying fallow.

Please! Help out by commenting below on all the stuff that's wrong.

PARC is back on the calendar

For several month, PARC has been missing from the calendar. It's back.

What to tell people who now expect you to go into university because it's "free" for poor people in Ontario

So now that the government has been talking about introducing grants or whatever to low-income students, poor people across Ontario are probably getting flack for not jumping at the opportunity to attend university.

This is what happens. Governments make it look like something's available, and the public is split into two groups: those who don't need the program but now think it does things it doesn't do, and those who do need the program and end up finding out they can't access it, or that it doesn't work. There's all these myths that the public has in their heads about poor people, about the free stuff we can get, which we can't actually get. About drug rehab programs that don't exist. Stuff like that. Now we can add education to that list. A lot of people already thought that ODSP would pay for people's education. Now that misconception can be expected to expand. So we're going to get even more flack than we already do, for not taking advantage of opportunities that aren't actually there.

Probably the most powerful limitation of the program is that it doesn't apply to part-time students. So you have to take the plunge 100% and be a full-time student in order to apply to have free tuition. That excludes a lot of people right off the bat.

The government has been ultra vague about the program. Apparently it applies to people whose parents make less than 50k a year. So does it apply to people whose parents are outside Ontario? And how are people expected to document their parents' earnings?

Another big limitation is that people must first be accepted into a university program, and then apply for a grant. So does that mean that the grant is actually a loan, meaning it's not actually free? And is there a limit to the number of people who will be given the grant? Will there be waiting lists? Who knows. Anybody who's applied for the HSF knows about the difference between public perception and policy reality. The public thinks poor people can have their moving expenses paid for, and poor people end up using shopping carts and the TTC to move.

So it'll be interesting to see how this actually works out. For a program that's supposed to come into play very, very soon, there's not much information available.

A bunch of updates after the site went stale for awhile

So... the site went stale over the past year, as in the calendar drifted out of date with some important bits of info, which is pretty terrible. It's bad. There is really nothing worse than showing up to someplace, hungry, hoping to find free food, and facing a locked door. That's bad.

So everything up to October 28 in the comments on the calendar page has been added. Those who made these comments are awesome. And it's apparent that a page should probably be added for meal reviews, complaints, etc. Maybe that'll happen.

Anyone with intel to report on mealtimes and stuff is highly encouraged to do so on the calendar page.

Get to the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank now

TVFB is once a month. The door's locked. There's usually someone right there to open it for you. So don't have a heart attack if the first thing you encounter is a building with no signs up, but it's the right address, and there's people inside, but the door's locked. It's okay.

This place has no catchment zone. But they're very carefully vetting everyone because they're terrified that someone with a job might come here for vegetables. Those evil working poor people. And they're very careful about excluding meat-eaters. Sort of. They're very careful to make everybody say that they're at least avoiding meat. So consider yourself effectively vetted.

Open from noon to 4pm, they serve amazing soup along with their stuff. Most of what they hand out is beautiful whole vegetables. That's why it's worth it. Some of their stuff isn't ripe and never ripens. Just like grocery store food!

People travel 30km round trip to come to this place. Families from all over the GTA descend on this downtown Toronto spot to tap this rare access to vegetables. Still no nuts, not much fruit, but whatever. It's equivalent to a haul from The Stop's food bank.

How to go on strike... when you're unemployed

Yeah. Fuck yeah. The unemployed need to strike for better labor conditions. Isn't that insane? Yeah. It's totally insane. So how on earth does an unemployed person go on strike?

Let's examine what our jobs are as unemployed people. It's not really that we have jobs to do, it's more like, we are products, and we have to perform our designed function, or else our market value diminishes. So what is our function as products? Our function is to erode the strength of our labor rights. Or rather, our employed friend's labor rights. As long as we're here to provide an example of what could happen to them if they get picky about how badly they're willing to get fucked by their employers, we're performing our main function. But it goes beyond that, of course. We also have to sell the public on a very simple, phony narrative about what poverty is and where it comes from. We have to line up at soup kitchens so people can point to us and say "look, see that's what'll happen to you if you complain about not getting a raise!"

You can tell because any time you point out a systemic barrier that's reinforcing your poverty, somehow your complaint will be interpreted as "I have given up on trying to do anything to help myself." This often happens to people when they try to advocate on their own behalf, instead of bullying their way through everything. It can happen on any issue. It happens to women when they try to assert their most basic and obvious rights over their own bodies. It happens to black people when they point out that police have a hard-on for their blood.

Our presentation as a commodity subverts our desire to show off our own sense of determination, our positive attitude. It's not good enough to have a positive outlook. It's not good enough to be ashamed of being poor: you're expected to ignore everything that led to your situation, and ram yourself up against the same set of barriers over and over again. And you're expected to find things about yourself that aren't even true, to hold up as the evil personality traits that are holding you back. Your fake laziness, for example. Your imaginary addictions. All the things that your friends and family create in their minds because they don't know you're on benefits. They don't know how inadequate those benefits are. And you can't let them find out because then they'd stop talking to you! So our function also includes keeping the rest of the public in the dark. They must not find out about how little we actually get.

We're also expected to keep the rest of the public in the dark about how much of their money, which they think is going to us, is going to the people who provide the services that we count on, to replace the money we're not getting. The public is very ignorant about how large the poverty industry really is. And of course, anybody who's either employed by or commodified by (treated as a client of) the industry has every reason not to criticise it at all. We have to go along to get along. Kind of like how there's no real point in voicing any criticisms when a soup kitchen gives you dangerous, inedible or unhealthy food: you will be punished by other soup kitchen users, if not by staff. And you'll be punished by your friends for mentioning it.

So what do your employed friends and the rest of the public get out of remaining so ignorant? Do they save money? Nope. They do manage to keep a lot of people employed who'd lose their jobs if a guaranteed living-wage income supplement were introduced, though. But that's not the real reason that their ignorance is so valuable. There's a semi-real reason, and then the real reason. The semi-real reason is that it allows the public to ignore politics on this issue, and the public wants to ignore politics on as many issues as possible. Poverty is an issue that's permanently backburnered. So that's the semi-real reason. The real reason is: without poverty we can't have exploitative labor practices. And without that, and without slavery, and without pollution, big evil international business just isn't profitable enough to compete with mom-and-pop small business operations. It's just a large-scale vs. small-scale thing. It's a way to add unecessary levels of management by increasing the size of an operation. And now we're getting into market and trade and finance territory, but that's the problem: poverty is related to transnational corporate success.

There's gotta be a whole bunch more functions that we're supposed to be filling as products in the poverty industry. This is definitely a beginner list. A start. But let's see what we can find in terms of actionable recommendations for the common peasant looking to turn their life into one continuous culture jam aimed at resetting the economics of our civilization.

1. No more invisibility. Why pick an inaccurate oversimplification like "not going out much lately" when you can pick an accurate one like "can't, too poor"? Why? You don't have to make excuses for your poverty. And you don't have to identify yourself personally if you don't want to, why not became a citizen journalist aka whistleblower? Recording devices are cheaper than ever. Blogging is easier than ever. Anonymity is easier than ever. Awesome computers are right there at the job search centre waiting for you. When you're in the middle of a serious poverty moment, hit record. YouTube has a "blur all faces" feature. What would the anti-police-violence movement be doing without all those awesome anonymous cellphone videos. It'd be standing around holding its dick like we are. All the time.
2. No more excuses. They're barriers. They're real. They stopped you before. They'll stop you again unless they're taken down. They can't be taken down 'til they're visible. And who identifies barriers? The people being impeded by them.
3. No more compromises. You've been eating food that makes you sick, at places that make you scared, to avoid hunger. Well... don't you have the absolute perfect makings of a hunger strike built into your situation? Yes you do. Call it a poverty fast, document it, and show it off. Choose hunger.
4. Demand political power: you're not telling the people you know what's going on with you so they'll give you stuff or money or personally help you. You're telling them so they'll realize what's going on generally, and write to a politician about it, or comment on an article about it, or write to an editor about it, or do something that demonstrates political solidarity and awareness. Anytime somebody tries to give you something to help, that's what they're trying to avoid. They're trying to avoid becoming politically active on any issue, especially this one. Your sympathetic friends would sooner part with every single object they have than put their necks on the line by posting a link to an article about systemic, self-reinforcing poverty. And you need to indicate to them that what you need isn't a fish, isn't fishing instructions, it's for the river to be cleaned up so the fish can come back. Don't go out telling your sob story for donations. Go out telling your sob story for mobilization. It's the only way to keep friends who aren't living in poverty, but you have to work hard to make them understand that you don't want their resources, you want their political support, not personally and individually but as a privileged person speaking out for a whole class of oppressed persons. This is something that people love to do, in fact, even though they're terrified of doing it.
5. No more secrets: don't let the people around you think you collect more from ODSP or welfare than you actually do. Don't let them think you get free transportation. Don't let them think you get free food that works for you when really it doesn't. Don't let them think you can afford to accept a job offer when you can't. Don't let them keep on not knowing how that works. Don't let them think somebody can go to work for three weeks without food, without laundry money, and without transportation. Don't let them think you can save for a trip. Don't let them think your benefits package increases when expenses increase. Don't let them think you get a break on rent or utilities or anything. Don't let them think you can just check into a shelter anytime when really you can't. Don't let them think you want them to know all this stuff so you can have their resources. You don't want their resources, you don't want their recommendations, you want them to email their politicians about why your benefits leave you way below the poverty line. You want them to correct their coworkers when they make uninformed statements about poor people. You want them to join you in the real world. You want them to disengage with the fantasy.
6. Find clarity. Finally. We're not supposed to be clear with ourselves about what our own responsibilities are, because we're not allowed to identify barriers. As long as we can't identify barriers, we have to take responsibility for things that we can't demonstrate we've been responsible for. Without being able to separate out our own failures from the barriers that have messed with us, we can't even address what we ourselves screwed up on. And without acknowledging those barriers, we can't do anything to strategize around them. So if you want to talk about taking control of your life, in any situation, half of that consists of breaking through barriers that other people have set up, and the other half is you working on yourself. When those barriers are hugely profitable and politically entrenched, then your struggle has been politicized and needs to be addressed politically. Fortunately, we're technically living in a democracy, so we all have political power. Unfortunately, people don't really have the power to advocate for their own needs, and the public at large has been sold on a weird version of democracy where we are absolutely terrified of using that power. That fear comes from confusion. Who wants to wield a weapon of tremendous power when the target is unclear? And lack of clarity is the best defence against a politically-empowered public. So what do we have to do to gain clarity? We have to go ahead and identify barriers, and talk about them. We have to talk about where they come from, we have to talk about the malicious intentions behind them, as well as the innocent intentions that lubricated their development. We have to scheme around how we're going to empower ourselves to overcome them. Why re-enter a job market that's based on exploitation? Why pretend to be lazy when you're being excluded by class? Why not just call out the exclusion and demand inclusion? Isn't that you empowering yourself? Why not say hey, here's my two lists: the list of problems that I'm bringing to the table, and what I'm doing about them, and the list of problems that the market and the industry and the government are all bringing to the table, and what I'm doing about them. Instead of just presenting your situation as a big jumbled mess that you'll sort out when you get motivated. There's no way to get motivated if it's an unwinnable fight based on lies and fantasy. The veil of bullshit has to be removed, and then our lives can be detangled. It's just so much easier to solve a real problem than an imaginary one.

This is stuff that applies to basically any social justice movement. So the point of this article is to indoctrinate poor people into activism against their own oppression. Hey, if you don't see it that way, if you really do think it's a matter of bootstraps and addictions and luck and whatever then have fun being on the wrong side of history. You'd have made a great KKK member.

Let's compare notes on budgeting...

Okay so none of us have a chance at making a working budget out of what we get from welfare, ODSP, CPP or any of the other benefits packages, and even if Basic Income supplements show up, they'll probably only bring us a third or halfway to the poverty line. Given how big the gap is between what we get, and what we'd need to have a budget that works in any measurable way, it's easy to just not get around to making a budget. Or as soon as you try, you give up because the daily reality that it describes is so terrible. But it's not worse than the reality that actually happens when you have no planned budget.

So even if your budget is unworkable, it's still worth making a planned budget out of it. We all have our little rules of thumb, tricks and tendencies. And if we can get the courage to face the horrible, painful truth of our budgets, we can expect some benefits from applying a bit of planning to them.

The comments section is open for anonymous comments, so let's share notes on how we do this. Not tips on deals and stuff like that, but ideas for budgeting. Or example budgets.

Here's a two-step idea that's really primitive, but it's something that a lot of people start out with when they're trying to bring some order to the chaos:

1. Sequestering some essential money and spending it on important items right away, before it disappears, and spreading the rest of the money out over the rest of the month. For example, pay rent and utilities right away, do laundry if you're a laundromat user and have been letting it go 'cause you ran out of quarters... anything that you definitely need to purchase, anything that you can save money on by getting it monthly, do it during that time, and set a maximum for the amount you're going to spend on that, because the rest of your money is gonna become your daily spending money, or your weekly spending money, or however you want to divvy it up.
2. For many of us, our daily budget is about six bucks, so an easy way to handle that is, you release a twenty dollar bill to yourself every three days. Or do a ten every two days, or a five every day, or whatever works for you. If it's easy to conceptualize, it'll be easier to put into practice. Put 'em in envelopes with dates on them, and those envelopes are also useful for whatever other stuff needs to be divided across the month, like any drugs that you need to have sorted out. A lot of medical cannabis users are living in poverty, and since recently, they've had to pay prohibition prices for their herbs instead of being able to personally grow them at no cost. So for people trying to make $300 a month replace the $5,000 worth they used to produce for themselves every month at no cost, while suffering the effects of a sudden reduction in their medication, being able to divide something like that up into daily supplies, from one chunk purchased once a month, can be a lifesaver. And really, it's the same with daily spending money. Another way to divide the money up is to shift it to your savings account, then set up a automatic transfers, to customize the trickle of money that comes into your account. Wouldn't it be great to get whatever you need to take care of those pressing issues at the beginning of the month, and then just have the rest of it flow into your account evenly, so you never run out? Well with a bit of setup work, you can have that.

It'd be great if we could share some notes on our different setups and experiences. This is just one idea.

Spending money to save money: a few good & bad investment ideas for your personal life

Not like you have money to throw around. But you know how sometimes you can spend an extra few bucks to save more money down the line. So here's some safe and not so safe bets for leveraging the ridiculously insufficient amount of money you do have, if you do have it.

For all the smokers out there: E-Cigarettes aren't bullshit and they are for poor people too. If you're switching from bootleg smokes (DKs, Natives, BBs etc) then it'll take a couple months for it to start paying for itself, but overall, on a month-to-month basis, including replacing your whole kit maybe once a year, it is cheaper. Much cheaper. And it's so much better. So definitely believe the hype: vaping is here to stay, and you can get started for as cheap as $50.

Don't bother with an electric bike. The cheap end of the market is a total consumer trap right now. Anything below $1000 is going to disappoint you. To put it simply, the battery situation is "not there yet" and the fabrication quality is dangerously low. Some of these bikes have such bad controllers that they'll just jump into motion when you least expect it. They're not road worthy. Whether you're talking about a power-assisted bicycle (they want us to call them "ped-elecs," as if that's going to happen), or an electric scooter (they want us to call them that instead of mopeds), you're better with a good bike than a shitty ebike.

TTC passes are only getting more expensive, and there is still no low-income pass in sight. So don't bother with a TTC pass, unless you need to use it at least ten times a week. That's the rule of thumb.

For a transportation upgrade that really pulls its weight, go for an old road bike. Toronto's bike network and roads in general are finally smooth enough that you don't need a mountain bike on them anymore. Switching from a mountain bike to a road bike will make every single trip easier. It just doesn't take nearly as much effort to make the same trips. And of course your range is increased. And your speed is increased. You're looking for a 70s or 80s 10-speed... you know, the ones with the curly handlebars that everybody's avoiding. There's no real reason to avoid them. They're great. Spend your helmet money on lights... they'll have a bigger effect on your safety. Get lights that take standard AA and AAA batteries so they're convenient to replace.

Become a smoothie person. There's no other way to actually enjoy getting beans and veggies into you. You end up having to cook less of them, and cook them less. You end up being able to eat stuff you normally wouldn't eat. Dumpster diving becomes easier. You can blend stuff you'd never throw on a plate. So grab yourself a blender or a magic bullet or something. There are these smoothie blenders that Loblaws and other places are selling for like $15... the trick with the Loblaws ones is, just keep your receipt and you can keep bringing them back for replacement when they break. They will break. With these cheap machines, you have to be all sorts of careful not to overload them and stuff. This is worth getting on top of. Less boiling, less chopping, more eating, more portability... the only problem is, the machines are fucking loud. Put it in a closet or an insulated box while it's blending! They're seriously loud. And hey, don't underestimate a regular blender.

Seems unimportant, but really good containers make a big difference. Upgrade yours to the glass ones with the plastic-and-rubber lids that clip on, and you'll notice yourself using them a lot more, and having more success when you do. Lots of people are paranoid about putting food, especially warm food, in plastic containers, especially stuff from the dollar store or re-used yogurt things and stuff. That paranoia is well-founded: plastics do leech into foods and they are damaging to your health. And having things break open in your bag is the last thing you need. The really good versions of these cost like $6 apiece, but they'll pay for themselves quickly, in terms of you being able to save more food.

Put together a go bag and a bug-out spot, so you can always safety get out of wherever you are. As a poor person, you never know when your place of residence, whether it's an apartment or a parking garage ventilation exhaust, is going to become unavailable to you. And when it does, you probably don't have any emergency options. Having a place to go to, where you can sleep, change, prepare food, and have privacy, and having a few days' worth of clothes and basic essentials, can provide you with a big measure of security. Even if you never have to use this stuff, that security translates into less anxiety when things are going fine, and less disruption in your life when bad things happen. Most of these weird, half-baked campsites you find in the Toronto wilderness are bug-out spots, created by people who are precariously-housed. That's why you rarely find them to be occupied. A bug-out bag contains fresh clothes, underwear, socks, first aid kit... and everything you'd want to have with you if you're suddenly out on the street without anything else. Anything that you regularly use that you'd like to have in this bag as well, don't put it in the bag, but keep it all in one spot in your place, so you can quickly load it into the bag and get the fuck out. You need to be able to pack up and leave while your roommate is flipping out, before he finds the knives. Or while your parents are flipping out, before they call the cops. Or while your landlord is flipping out, before he calls his cousins. People who've suffered domestic abuse know exactly what this is about.

Instead of getting a cheap smartphone, get a good dumb phone. Like a basic phone that's not shitty. And then spend the rest of your money on an ok tablet. So much better to have an ok basic phone, and an ok tablet, than a shitty smartphone for the same price. And that seems to be your options.

Most poor people are still choosing phone over internet, because we can't afford both. For a lot of people, it'd be better to switch to being an internet user, even if it means giving up on having a phone and a phone number. For the same price as a typical cellphone plan, you can get internet and a home phone. It's really a much better option. If you have internet, you basically don't need TV. You can get your sports, gaming, news, all that stuff on the 'net, and you can use it to publish things, learn things, stay in touch... you know, actually develop your life. Canada has the most expensive cellphone service in the world, so it's not even cheap enough for people who aren't poor, but like bank accounts, there is no cellphone plan that's meant for us.

It's getting serious

The calendar gets about 400 views per week. The article about ODSP payment dates gets about 7,000 views per week. That's pretty brutal. That's actual soup kitchen users and actual ODSPers looking for food. Looking for their money. Using the 'net to do so. And yet service providers, from TDIN to your corner church and their meal program, generally don't publish their actual mealtimes to the public. TDIN's not making their holiday meal program guide public this year. No announcement, no particular reason, they just never did it.

The holiday closures totally outnumber the extra holiday meals. Absolutely dwarf them. Those closures are not expressed anywhere online. There's no brochure about them distributed through the system, there's no real notification system at all. If you're not going to these programs on a regular basis, and checking up on their holiday schedule, you have absolutely no way of knowing about closures. Well, except for this website. Where it's accurate. This year won't be so bad. The calendar is mostly up to date. A lot of closures have been flagged. Some of them are pretty major. St. Felix said no more holiday closures, and changed their mind. Good Shepherd said no holiday closures, and changed their mind. Sistering and 416 Dundas are going strong, so women are covered. The ones who are close by or can travel, anyway.

We're heading into this winter with fewer shelter beds than we had last winter, not more. Way fewer. Hundreds less than we had a few years ago. Good luck out there! You'll need it. All three levels of government, and society at large, definitely want all of us dead or in jail. Or at least, totally starving.

The holiday meals, and the calendar

So... the holiday meals list from TDIN is out. And it's been LEAKED!!!! Oh my god oh my god oh my god! They stopped publishing it online, so there is absolutely no way to view it on the internet except, of course, on this site. Because somebody uploaded it to their google docs and posted it. And then it got compared to the Calendar page on this site, which got heavily updated. And then it got embedded below:



There are some clear discrepancies between this schedule and the regular mealtimes of a lot of these places. So there are some details to clear up, but the calendar is much more accurate than it was six hours ago. Many, many disappointing closures have been marked, so hopefully some heartbreak can be avoided./

It's worth noting that there are way, way more closures than extra holiday meals. Way more. Way, way fucking more.

The other thing, this is silly, but Sistering and 416 Dundas, the two major places specifically for women, weren't on the site at all, and now they are. It's pretty startling to finally be able to add a couple of programs that are just two meals every single day, at the same time. Not a few days a week at three different times, not every third and fourth sunday of some bullshit, but every single day of the week, at the same times. And the hours of the drop-in are: 24/7. It's like a whole other world, especially for women. Where you don't have to go all over the city every single day, where you can go to the same place for two or even three meals each day. And you can just go there anytime you need to. That's absolutely amazing. That must be wonderful. It makes a lot more sense why men in poverty are so much more visible: they have to stay on the move, and the women are all hidden away at the women-only programs. There's only one breakfast and lunch program that's open every single day, and includes men, and it's the Good Shepherd.

Doesn't matter until it's you: the difference between lactose intolerance and dairy allergy

Lactose intolerance is when you have digestive issues with dairy. Dairy allergy is when you're allergic to it. Like being allergic to grass or whatever. Lactose intolerance presents as symptoms of indigestion: gassiness, bloating, stomach discomfort. Dairy allergy presents in a bunch of different ways, like nasal congestion, sleep apnea and resulting insomnia, and resulting irritability, excess mucus and resulting bad breath... usually it's comparable to hayfever symptoms. Lactose intolerance is relatively rare, and dairy allergy is very, very common. It's one of the most common food allergies. Lactose intolerance is widely known, and dairy allergy is virtually unknown. So the common one is the one with the lower amount of public awareness about it.

The most important difference is the foods that will and won't cause trouble: a lactose intolerant person doesn't have to avoid as many foods as someone with a dairy allergy. If you're allergic to dairy, you can't even include foods just because they're labelled as dairy-free. Stuff without milk or dairy products listed on the label may include them. It's the difference between "may contain traces of" being okay or being not okay. If you're lactose intolerant, cocoa is okay because it only contains traces of milk, whereas if you're allergic, traces is all you need to be stuffed up or whatever.

Some stuff that contains dairy that's labelled as dairy-free: Chocolate almond milk, chocolate soy milk, etc. Any drink with chocolate in it is very unlikely to be made with cacao instead of cocoa (the key difference), because cacao is actual chocolate, and cocoa is processed chocolate, which is cheaper and more stable and, of course, requires milk to process. So those Vega chocolate covered vegan chocolate bars? Yeah, they do have milk in them. Because they have cocoa in them. If it were cacao instead of cocoa, they'd be vegan. But it's cocoa, so it's dairy. Bread is also impossible to distinguish, even if dairy is not contained on the label. There are probably some safe brands at the grocery store, but if you're not sure, just don't buy bread. It's easier to make your own dairy-free pancakes than it is to try all the different breads in your grocery store, to find the one that's magically, accidentally dairy-free.

So unfortunately the vegan dairy-free meals at The Stop aren't completely dairy-free. They're dairy-free enough for people with lactose-intolerance, because they recognize that condition. But nobody recognizes dairy allergies, so it is officially impossible to find a soup kitchen meal that will not trigger a dairy allergy. The Stop does come very, very close, closer than any of the other places, but it's still not really an option, if you're allergic to dairy.

Actually one of the few places where an allergy to dairy is recognized, and surprisingly at that, is in the ODSP and OW special diet directives. They qualify you for an extra dollar a day, just like lactose intolerance does. And if you have both, you just get that extra dollar a day. Not two. But don't worry, there's a benefit in there for involuntary weight loss, too, so if you can document your starvation with your doctor, then a few months of only having access to one soup kitchen meal, half of the days of the week, you'll probably qualify for that benefit. It's a far cry from the extra $300 or so that we used to be able to receive for those who needed an all-organic or all-vegan diet, but that disappeared as part of our cumulative 50% wage cut over the past decade. So, yeah, we have two food banks and one meal program that recognizes that not everyone can have dairy. See you at the TVFB. Don't grab the vega bars.

Please, share your meal times info... the calendar is out of date

The calendar hasn't received major updates recently. And the special TDIN holiday meal listing is so incomplete, it's hard to use it as a guide. They've also been sketchy on the accuracy of the listings in the past. The calendar is supposed to be reliable, but it's not. Not really. There's been some good feedback on meal program specifics so far, and that's been awesome. Please - keep it coming, and we need more. At some point, the calendar will be replaced with one that's easier for the public to work on without logging in and something. Like a wiki calendar, wiki map, that kind of stuff.

Trying to keep the calendar up to date, without actually using the meal programs, leads to a lot of dead ends like these:

What's the deal with Masaryk Cowan? Does anybody know if they're still doing breakfasts, or whether they have any extra holiday meals or closures? Their answering machine is full. Is there an email address for them?

The Salvation Army's Gateway website doesn't exist. They're also really bad at publishing their contact information, and promoting their meals. 211 thinks they have a saturday dinner program. Is it saturday, or is it every 2nd tuesday?

Et cetera, et fucking cetera. Every org does not communicate with its users. Exactly why this site exists. Ask soup kitchen staff why they find publishing to the net so impossible. Go ahead and ask them. They could use Blogger, they could use Facebook, they could use the sites that they already have, but no. It's all just too difficult. It's too much. Too much hassle. Too much co-ordination. I mean, the only reason they have flashy websites that are hard for them to update, with blank calendars that have never been added to by staff, is that they need a placeholder site in order to get funding. That's what it's there for. All the meal programs info that we do see, or any content aimed at their users, is a generous fucking afterthought, and one that cost them extra money.

So please, users, share your research. Share your schedule! Please. It matters right now more than usual because it's the holidays, but really, it's going to matter next month much, much more than it does this month. It's gonna matter during January, where we have to go six weeks between payments instead of four. So we're 50% poorer in January. January's the craziest month because of the lack of money, December's the craziest month because of unexpected holiday-related closures. So between those two problems, This site becomes more important than it is during the rest of the year.

How to make a basic woodland shelter

Shelter beds are scarce, and shelters are shitty. So a lot of people choose to camp out instead. It sucks to go into the bush and learn all the lessons that everybody else has had to learn, so here's some tips to get you started.

First, here's your procedure:

1. Choose your site carefully. You'll need it to be convenient to get in and out of, but also private. Don't put your site along a popular path. It turns the path into part of your site, and makes people uncomfortable as they come through. Don't pretend that you're claiming space: you have no right to deny anybody else their use of the space. You have no right to block off existing paths in order to make your site work better for you. You have to work within the bounds of what's socially reasonable. So what you're looking for is a patch of forest that is big enough for a site, and in order to find that, you'll need to figure out how far one path is from another. To make this easier, hang up a bright piece of garbage or something in a spot you're considering as a potential site. Then you can evaluate how visible it is from the adjoining paths. Evaluate and reposition your marker until you've got something with sightlines you can work with. You'll know how visible your site is, and you'll know which areas you may need to "bush up" as you're creating your site.
2. Plan your paths carefully. You'll need one or two paths that connect your site to the nearest access paths. If you create a path that connects two other paths, and put your site along it, then you've wrecked your own privacy by providing a new route through the forest. So it's best to make a dead-end path. Don't put your site at the end of the path (that's too obvious)... put your parking spot there. That's where you leave your bike, bags and other stuff you don't need at the site. You'll want to keep a camouflage tarp or something to cover your stuff. For your site, create another small trail somewhere along the way. Then your site will be at the end of a trail that's off a dead-end trail with some junk at the end of it, that's off a trail that people actually use. And at each trail juncture, you can install some easy-to-move obstacle, like a big dead branch or something, that hides the trail.
3. Create your bathroom. You don't really need a shovel, just a spade. Just some gardening stuff. Or a stick. And you just need a spot for two holes. You dig a hole, cover up your shit whenever you use that hole, and then when it's full, you dig another hole next to it and do the same thing. By the time it's done, the first hole will be fully composted and you can dig it up again. If that sounds gross, study biology. Your bathroom will also need some privacy and wind blockage. So build a tiny nest around your hole spot. A nest is like... a fence made of dead branches, stuffed with dead grasses. Might as well get some practice with a little one before you build your big one.
4. Before putting up a tent or anything, build your nest. Your main one. It needs to be large enough to enclose a small tent, a fire, and some working space. So it should be the size of a bedroom, and tall enough that you can just barely peek over the top. Once you've made a fence out of dead branches and trees, you can fill it in with weeds like stinging nettle or knotweed (the stuff that looks like bamboo). It should be thick enough that you have the privacy and wind protection you need to do basic tasks.
5. To make your main shelter, either build a teepee inside your nest, or turn your nest into a yurt. To build a teepee, grab a bunch of long, straight poles, like dead trees or two-by-fours or something, and lay them out on the ground. Fasten them together at one end with rope or a belt or something, and stand them up with the tied-up end in the air. Then, one by one, move the bottom ends of the poles outward into a circle. The top ends of the poles will cross each-other, so don't fasten them right at the top. Once you've got a nice cone shape, tighten the top if necessary. Then you wrap it with tarp. If you have bright tarps, this is where to use them: do two layers of tarping, one on the inside, and one on the outside... the inside one can be bright, as long as the outside one isn't. Two layers instead of one, especially if there's some space between them, adds a ton of thermal insulation to the shelter. You can even put in a layer of old messed-up sleeping bags or blankets between the two layers of tarp. One way or another, you've got to leave a hole at the top, for smoke from your fire to escape. It should be the same size as the fire itself... so, the smallest fire you can imagine. You can always cover the fire hole with an umbrella or a parasol or something, just make sure there's enough room for smoke to escape. Keep in mind, you'll need room for both your fire and your small tent, so your fire may not be right in the middle of the shelter. It's easy to build an off-center cone... you'll probably have some poles that are longer than others anyway, and having one side that's less slanted than the others just makes it easier to put a door there. For the door, you'll want to have extra tarp overlapping on both the inside and the outside, and you'll want the space between the inner and outer layers to be a lot wider at this point: wide enough that you actually have a kind of airlock, so you can go through the outer tarp, close it behind you, take off your outer clothes, and then go through the inner tarp. This will help reduce dust, cold and moisture in your shelter. If you're going to turn your nest into a yurt, instead of building a teepee, then you'll need to create a slanted ceiling on top, and put a tarp on top of that. You can easily wrap the fence you've made with a tarp on the inside, so you'll have a wall around you. You'll still need a smoke hole above wherever your fire is going to go.
6. The type of fire pit you're going to build is good for cooking on, and doesn't generate as much smoke as a typical fire. It's basically what we'd call a "dakota fire hole." Check out some pictures of them and these instructions will make sense. The classic design is great, but it's best to use a rock instead of earth between the two holes. Basically, you dig two holes that are right next to each-other, and then dig up the space between them, too. So you have one rectangular hole. It should be just big enough for a baby to sleep in. But you're not putting a baby in there. Like a foot by three feet, or smaller. In the middle, separate the hole into two holes with a channel connecting them, install yourself a nice rock. It's gotta be like a bridge across the hole. You need the air to be able to go down a hole, across into the other hole, and back out again, because that's what makes this type of fire hole work. You fill one hole with your firewood, and put the tinder down under the rock through the other hole, and light it. The fire burns under the rock, sucks in air through the wood, and the smoke and flame comes out the other hole. The rock gets warm enough to cook on. If you're not cooking anything, bake some rocks so you can sleep with them later on.
7. To prepare your tent area, put down your drop tarp... this is the one tarp you need that doesn't just make water run down the side, it has to actually block water. Most tarps will let water through if there's something touching the dry side. This one has to actually be even more than a tarp, so it's good to use something like an old broken air mattress or a rubber boat or something. The other thing you'll want is just some space underneath, so if you can find loading palettes or some kind of wooden frame to mount your tent on, that's great. An old door on some bricks is perfect. You'll want to choose a tent that's as small as you can handle, because you'll want to keep it just for sleeping. The only clothes you want to have inside the tent are you clean, indoor ones. Outerwear needs to be hung to dry instead, and is too dusty to be kept inside the tent. Combating dust is going to be one of your main missions. Since you're already indoors, you don't need a fly on your tent, but it does help to keep it warm. You'll want to choose a tent that you can easily bring outside to air out, because it will get damp. Humans sweat about a litre of water every night, so all your bedding is going to need to be removed from the tent and hung up to air out, fairly often. So even your sleeping bag, pillowcases, blankets and sheets should be in drab, woodland colours. Not the bright stuff that campers seem to prefer.
8. It's silly to keep your supplies in a site that you're not at most of the time. Your site is as visible as it is because it has to be large enough to house a human, but the stuff that you'll want to leave there doesn't have any living needs of its own, so it can be stashed in a storage spot nearby. Maybe somewhere along the path to the site, or between your parking lot and the site. A storage spot consists of a strong suitcase with a combination lock, a camouflage tarp to wrap it in, and a hole to stick it in. Doesn't have to be a deep hole, just deep enough to sink the suitcase into. If it's not a waterproof container, then don't sink it at all, just cover it up with brush and stuff.
9. You'll find there's a lot of things you want to camouflage, so it's good to craft up some of your own camo mats. All you need is long weeds or grasses, or flexible dead branches, and you just weave them together like cloth. Make your main mat and then weave in grasses and stuff, and have bushy things poking out so it doesn't look like what it is. Having convenient bits of matting to cover things up will save you having to scrounge for leaves and things whenever you use your storage spot or your parking spot, and a woven mat will stay in place better than anything else. It's also a lot better to use stuff like that instead of tarp, which is more visible and is technically just plastic garbage.
10. Now that your site's up, you'll have to check it regularly to see if you have any removal notices or business cards from outreach people. Housing workers routinely scout for campsites, and leave their contact information everywhere they go. If you can use their help, then go ahead and contact them: if you're in the process of getting housing help, then it's less likely that your site will be removed by police or the city. If you just leave the cards up, the likely outcome depends on how garbage-y your site is. Actually, your waste management situation and the overall visibility of your site is the biggest determining factor in whether or not it will be removed. If your site is targeted for removal, a notice will be posted there, giving you time to remove whatever you want before the city comes in and takes the rest. That's why you'll want to check the site, at least on a weekly basis, and preferably every three days... because those notices are meant for people who are living at their sites. Ultimately, the best course of action upon realizing that your site has been discovered is to move. If you've been found by housing outreach workers, then anybody can find you. Those little business cards are a good litmus test. If they show up at the other sites in the area, and not yours, then go ahead and pat yourself on the back: you're invisible. And as a poor person, invisibility is your absolute best security.
11. Make a greenhouse. Not for gardening... although, why not... but for drying clothes and stuff. You'll want to put it in a super sunny spot. You can use old mismatched tent poles for this project. You can also use this to build your main shelter, as an alternative to a cone or a yurt. It's easier to wrap, because the shape of the surface is rectangular instead of conical. All you do is, stick your tent poles in the ground and bend them over so they make a half-cylinder, like an airplane hangar shape. Then cover it with transparent plastic. Then you have two semicircular entrances, one on each side. Apart from being a good spot to dry clothes and grow food, a greenhouse can be a great hangout and cooking spot. Because it needs to be exposed to sunlight, it's probably going to be a lot more visible than your other structures, so it should be far away from the rest of your stuff. This is where you can bring your tent and bedding to, so it can air out and dry, even if it's cold and damp outside. As long as it's somewhat sunny, a greenhouse will either dry things out or just prevent them from getting wetter. The only other option you have for drying things out is to hang them above the fire, and some things you really don't want to smell like firewood, like your interview clothes!

You'll need the following supplies to do this:

• gardening gloves, a spade, a little shovel
• tarp in black, brown, dark green and/or camouflage... not blue, not bright green, not red
• a small tent, waterproof tarp and exercise mats to go underneath it, sleeping bag and pillow to go inside it, waterproof clothing bag
• a suitcase with a combination lock
• a big metal thing or some bike frames, to lock your bike to

Rules of thumb:

• Don't cut down or remove living plants. The only legit exceptions are invasive species that shouldn't be here anyway, like knotweed, or species that nobody wants around like stinging nettle. If you break this rule, you risk both official and vigilante justice.
• Don't bring brightly-coloured objects into the bush. Red and blue are especially visible.
• Any plastics you bring into the bush, you have to bring out again with you. And metals.
• Bury your organic waste. Don't throw it into the bush: you'll end up with continuous raccoon noise and you'll never be able to tell when somebody's coming. And the coons will move on to harass you for every scrap of food at your site too.
• Don't do food in your tent. Pests will totally chew through the tent to research the food situation. Any place you eat or prepare food is going to be invaded by animals, so make sure you eat in a spot that's ok for animals to invade.
• Don't interrupt other people's use of the space, or impact on their sense of security. Don't apologize for being there either.
• Sometimes it's easier to team up with some trusted friends and put together a communal site that anybody can use. Sometimes it's less of a hassle to just do it alone. That's a choice that everybody has to make themselves... just make sure you know which choice you've made.
• Your whole site and everything in it is technically an illegal dump site. You're either dumping illegally, or trespassing, or exercising your legal right to live in the forest. Some laws suggest that if you're in the flood plain of a river, you're legal to camp out, but in that case you're also at risk of being swept away in the flood. That risk will make the city want to take responsibility for your safety by arresting you and putting you in a dangerous shelter.
• In general, camping in a flood zone sucks. So beware of riverside spots. Look around for signs of flooding: if there's a bed of small bits of wood that seem perfectly placed together, or banks of sand and stuff like that, that's a good indication that you're in a flood plain. If you do decide to camp in a flood zone, you have to be prepared to evacuate at a moment's notice, and you have to pay attention to the weather reports from upstream. It doesn't have to be raining in Toronto for the Don river to flood. It just has to rain somewhere up the river.
• Late fall and winter are the best time to scout for spots, because it's the only time you can evaluate your year-round concealment options. A well-hidden shelter built during the summer can become totally exposed when fall comes and the leaves fall down, so if you've built in such a spot, expect to spend the entire fall working on your nest. And you'll still end up sticking out like a sore thumb. Pick a spot with lots of brush and bramble that sticks around throughout the winter, or a spot with coniferous trees that stay green year-round, and you'll have a lot less worries during the winter. As if you need anything more to worry about.
• You'll need to keep a stash of dry firewood. You can use your fire to dry off wet wood. Any stack of firewood, while it's drying out, is going to attract spiders. There'll be little insects fleeing the wood as its sitting there waiting to be burned, and the spiders are there to feast on those insects. Don't worry about any of that, that's why you have a tent in addition to your shelter, and they will get the heck out of your site to avoid being near the fire, but when you return to your shelter after not having a fire in there for awhile, there's gonna be bugs in there to evict. Go ahead and start a fire, go out and gather more wood, and by the time you get back, the insects will have evacuated the shelter. If you run out of dry firewood in the winter, you're absolutely fucked.
• You have to buffer your supplies of everything. Buffer your firewood, buffer your water. As in, have extra. Go out and get more when you get down to a few days' worth. Don't wait until you're out. Have lots of extra water and firewood waiting for you at your site, and check it each time you check the site.
• While you're walking around your site, it's easy to gradually destroy the surrounding plants, which not only offer you concealment, but are also an essential part of the area and not something you have a right to destroy. That's why it's important to stick to your own path and go elsewhere when you're looking for dead foliage to use as camouflage. It requires a little more work to venture further away for this material, but it's essential to maintaining a natural looking site that won't get found.
• You have to somehow do all this without disrupting the bush. We can't afford to have the local forests ruined because of our shelter needs. And there's nothing that you need to do in order to meet those needs that actually requires any kind of disruption anyway. Every little bit of patience and deference will pay dividends.

The 519 finally goes LGBTQ-only

It's always tough, that time you show up where it's the first time you can't be there. Either because the program's ended, moved, changed times, or like in this case, you became not the right demographic.

It's especially tough when it's the only place you can go, and you're already hungry, and you've come a long way. That's what many people are going through at the entry to the 519's sunday breakfast and lunch programs. We used to be greeted with an open door and a lineup... now there's a sign-in desk.

Hopefully this improves things for LGBTQ soup kitchen users. As it was, the 519 was a place where they could share a meal with their straight buddies. So this won't just impact a lot of people's food security - it'll impact friendships as well.

It's sad, too. Apart from The Stop, the 519 is the only place where the staff actually know what's in the food. And maybe PARC. And maybe 40 Oaks? And why the change? Was it a matter of their funding being diluted? Was their program just becoming too popular to manage? Were they unable to keep the place safe and secure, with straight cis people included? Was it just too much of a gap to bridge?

It was probably because it was just too fucking crowded.

The Stop's vegan meals a critical daily lifeline for Torontonians with special dietary needs, and without grocery budgets

They're calling them "veggie" meals. But they're actually vegan. If you mean vegan, say vegan. So, if you can't eat dairy, or you shouldn't eat dairy, or you eat meat but not pork, or not beef, or whatever... this is your lifeline. This and the TVFB (the Toronto Vegetarian Food Bank). And you can get it once a day, several days a week, at The Stop, on Davenport, a few blocks west of Dufferin. So you might not be able to get meat without also getting dairy, but you might be able to avoid hunger, without getting dairy. Or you might be able to avoid hunger, while being vegetarian.

So, their lunch is guaranteed to have a vegan option, every time. Their breakfast, not so much. More like sometimes. But they plan their meals out in advance, so notwithstanding a few changes here and there at the last minute, you can get an idea, from week to week, which breakfasts you can go to.

Replacing one out of four meals a day (what, you only need three meals a day? that's awesome) can yield a tremendous amount of savings that can go into hard-to-find items. Like nuts, fruits, spices etc. You know, the stuff that the free food scene omits. I mean, we get lots of nuts. As long as they're peanuts. As long as those peanuts are in peanut butter. As long as that peanut butter was the cheapest available. Which means it's also got icing sugar in it. Yay. People with cognitive issues love that stuff. Yeah. We fucking adore it. And, let's see, we get lots of fruit. In cheap canned form. So that's great. For their budget. Not so great for our bodies, or our brains. In fact, it's that kind of packaged food that's being eyed as one of the primary causes of many of the mental health issues that have pushed us all to actually read articles like this, almost to the end, or even worse, writing them. And coming back to edit them. And rewriting them. In between meeting up with friends to apologize to them about not looking for work. Because that's what friends are into. You're either talking about how shitty your job is, or you're talking about why you don't have a job. It's wonderful to not see job postings at food banks and stuff.

Can The Stop take the lining up out of lining up?

The Stop is trying something monumental. They're trying to innovate their way into a more convenient food bank experience. They're trying to hack one of society's most evil necessary evils: the line. And they might have succeeded.

So here's their scheme: they just don't throw people's tickets out of the stack if they're not around when their number's called. They just keep calling everybody's numbers, in order, until they're at the end of the list, and then they start over. Apparently. This is the before-actually-experiencing-it article. So the idea is, you decide when you want to come back, and whenever you do come back, your wait time will be quick enough that, overall, you're spending less time waiting, and you're not waiting until significantly later in the day to complete the task.

The schedule, as of late 2015, is:

10am hand out numbers for the food bank
11am food bank starts up
noon: lunch in their meal program
Food bank numbers are called all afternoon. They're called in sequence, even if they've already been called and the person hasn't been there. So people can bail out and come back whenever they want in the afternoon, and whenever they come back, their place in line has basically been held.
3pm they close, so you can show up at 10am and then go do some other stuff, and come pick up your food in the afternoon. So you can avoid the entire lunch scene, if you want.

Everybody be warned and tell your pregnant or breastfeeding friends that Wednesdays is on reserve for them. If you're not pregnant or breastfeeding, don't come Wednesdays.

And they're not doing the food bank on Tuesdays anymore. So it's just Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Also, men really should consider going to the monday men's cooking program. Because apart from learning cooking stuff, you get a meal during the program, and at least another meal to take home with you, so that's two meals just for learning some kitchen stuff.

So, if this site makes money at some point, what's the craziest way we could spend it?

At some point, this site might get enough traffic to make money off AdSense ads. Assuming it's even a polite enough site to qualify.

But if money was raised from this site, what would be the absolute most awesome way to spend it? I've thought of various things, like sponsoring a vitamin program in a soup kitchen, or trying to sponsor some allergen-free, organic meals, or make the first organic food bank or something... but that's all just piling on to a system that sucks bad enough already. Probably Food Not Bombs would be a good choice for donating to, but it'd be nice to spend it on something political. Something that could create change. I mean, it'd be silly to do something big and flashy when we could just feed people, but is there some kind of publicity stunt we could pull that would shame the province? That's what we all really want, isn't it? To shame the province and the public into giving up on their oppression campaign against us. Or maybe to inspire them into it?

I'd like to get some feedback... let's say we had a thousand bucks to throw around. What would be a really great way to really hurt the politicians who've been hurting us? It'd be great to be able to reach out and really, really hurt them, badly. Politically. Like, what could we do to punish Mike Harris, with a thousand bucks? Or Kathleen Wynne, or Dalton McGuinty? Could we like... buy an attack ad on all three of them? Could we buy an attack ad against our own society at large? Maybe we could buy some radio ads, like PSAs, with some of OCAP's "poverty by the numbers" stuff quoted?

Or maybe we could make a documentary about systemic, strategic, manufactured poverty in Ontario and the rest of Canada?

This website is doing really well... because our lives are horseshit

So, this site gets about a hundred fucking hits a day. That's sad. Overall, the calendar has been viewed about twenty thousand times. So has the article about ODSP payment dates. That's pretty fucked. Almost all the site's traffic comes from Google. Almost all that traffic comes from search terms related to finding meal programs, or finding out when ODSP payments come out. But finally, an actual website, not just a comment, but an actual website, has linked to this one. Thank fucking god:

Like this site, it's completely anonymous. And mysterious. Whatever.

Anyway, this site gets good search engine recognition because it provides decent content. Actually, it does well because other sites don't provide that content. Other sites don't talk about ODSP payment dates, especially not government sites. Other sites don't talk about how our benefits compare with the cost of living... oh, wait, yes they do. Like newsmedia sites. Other sites don't talk about meal programs... oh, wait, yes they do - newsmedia articles, when they're talking about how easy it is to find a meal in Toronto and how you'd have to be "fat, lazy or stupid" in order to go hungry. I guess we all missed the part about "...or have any dietary restrictions whatsoever."

Anyway, this site does well because it's not bullshit, and because it's had time to do well. Here's how well it's doing:

Every once in awhile, we get a bigass spike to like 200 hits in one day, wow!

And then, of course, some months are busier than others, like December:

Of course, the big SEO curse is not being able to index for the name of your own site. So of course it's a good thing to come in number one for this. And I'll take any chance to rub it in everyone else's face. Especially since they've got the jobs I wanted when I was trying to be a web designer.

And of course, now that it's November, people are starting to wonder about Christmas... don't worry guys, I'm sure it'll be even worse this year than it was last year. Somehow.

So, yeah. This site rules, and its rising popularity is only making our voices of outrage louder and louder.

LOL the ministry made the mistake of having a facebook page, which means the public can besmirch it with the truth :D

Here's some of the solid gold from user comments on the official ODSP & OW facebook page: