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:

So when do ODSP payments come out for December of 2015? Is Christmas coming early again? And what was that crazy holiday overpayment and the clawbacks all about? It's such a fantastic and mysterious time of year!

Short version:

This year, ODSP payments go out on December 22nd, 2015. That's when ODSP recipients get paid.

Long version:

So, usually, ODSP payments go out on the last bank day of the month. So if the last day lands on a weekday that is not a holiday, then it's on the last day of the month. Otherwise, it's on the last bank day before that.

But last year, ODSP payments went out on the 22nd, for direct deposit, anyway. That's over a week early.

Of course, the government doesn't publish any information about when benefits payments go out, or what their formula is for deciding. They actually don't have control over it: the system released millions in random, extra payments this year. I got one, it was about fifteen hundred bucks. They're clawing it back fifty bucks a month. Anyway.

So, it seems like there's no formula for December's payment. But for whatever reason, it'll apparently come out on December 22nd.

Still no word on why they don't publish the formula or the schedule. They're just continually evasive about it, in every channel. It might differ by municipality or postal code or something. It's just creepy that they won't publish it. Especially given that it's obviously a popular question, given that the articles about it on this website have received over ten thousand page views.

A few legit comments have been tagged as spam, sorry... it's been fixed

So... Blogger's a bit funny sometimes... it tries to help out, you know... but it tagged a few people's posts as spam, omitting them for that reason. It didn't catch any actual spam, either. This, added to the fact that their search feature absolutely will not work, almost has me reaching for another CMS. Unfortunately, WordPress is an absolute filthy, stinking pile of vomit-encrusted fecal insanity, and the other ones aren't worth mentioning. Unless there's another one that is worth mentioning, in which case, please do mention it below, in the comments. Because at some point, Google is going to realize I'm using their product to criticize my government's murderous weaponization of their benefits programs, and I'll lose my Blogger account. It's like any job, no matter how carefully you follow the rules, there's always something they can nail you on. They make sure of it. So at some point it will need to switch to another service. If things really come down to it, of course, I can just make the whole thing in HTML and CSS. After all, that's what I used to do for a living. Before reality caught up with me.

Director Employment & Social Services annual salary: $154,254.81 + $4,493.55 in benefits

Don't worry, the person in Toronto who's in charge of us only makes between thirteen times and eighteen times what we do.

Over the past ten or so years, benefits for those who receive them have been slashed by anywhere between a third to half, depending on how you calculate it. That, plus the fumbling of people's affairs by government staff, has cost each of us somewhere between twenty and fifty grand over the same time period.

How did all this happen? It sort of started in 1995 when PC premier Harris took a fifth out of our income. So that's 22% gone. The Liberal premier that followed slashed our benefits repeatedly, in sort of roundabout detaily ways, so the public wouldn't notice, while raising benefits rates by 3% in 2005, and then 1% when Kathleen Wynne took office. So, both the conservatives and the Liberals have taken their best shot at our budget, and each of those parties and their politicians have eroded our already perfectly shitty benefits rates.

So, that's where it came from. Politicians decided that poor people should be poorer. That's simply what happened. And the public let them get away with it because they're easily fooled and willfully ignorant, and also because they totally hate us. I mean, poor people who are making middle-class money are doing it by doing jobs that middle class people aren't willing to do (because the labor code is being ignored, usually), and they're hyper aware of how much the government and middle class people look down on the unemployed. It's understandable that their work ethic is built upon an attitude of total subservient desperation. These are the people who end up dying of workplace related ailments, and just barely make it to retirement age without succumbing to all the sicknesses that their jobs have caused them. While they're still working and their illnesses haven't caught up with them yet, they have to make sure to shun anybody who finds any excuse not to work. So they have to work in solidarity with the middle-class people to minimize the money that we get, because they can't be seen as being supportive of the unemployed. So that's kind of the deal behind that. It's a combination of ignorance and hatred. But they really want you, and me, and all of us, dead or in jail, through suicide or grocery theft charges. Or the one where an officer knocks you out and then charges you with assault, that's a popular way to go down. I know personally, if an officer beat the shit out of me and then tried to sell that story to my family, they'd totally believe the officer. They'd completely buy it. Because even to my own loving family, who do totally love me, I don't have any credibility, because I don't have work, and I haven't for awhile. So... basically anybody at all can win in a he-said-she-said against me.

Think about it - would your family and/or friends stick up for you? Or would they just give the good officer the benefit of the doubt? Especially since you've been a little sketchy and a little skinny lately and you know what that means... addiction. Of course, hunger causes that too, but no. Poverty causes hunger, too, but no. It has to be drugs. If you're poor, you're on drugs. And you're fucked in the head, too. Must be. There's no other way that Canadians can become poor, ever. And if somebody does become poor like that, there's no way to help them except to teach them through suffering that nobody cares about them, and they should stop being such a pussy and bust through. So that's what people do. They man up or woman up or whatever, and become drug dealers. Because like, taking charge doesn't mean you suddenly have options. It just means you're taking options you wouldn't have before. So that's where our career criminals come from. They realize they're being edged out of the world of the healthy living, and they're like, "Oh, not only does my government hate me, but my society hates me, too... collectively, they do hate people who are like myself... that's incredible... so I'm basically at war with my own society... so, okay, if that's the way it is, I guess I'll be a pirate instead of being a civilian casualty or a soldier. Pirate is much better."

Who knows why Kathleen Wynne and Harris hate the poor so much. Their parents probably taught them to fear us. I mean, my parents taught me to fear the poor, homeless, the crazed, and of course anyone who's unemployed. They taught me that they'd steal from me. But instead, my employers and my government stole from me. Every employer I had broke the labor laws in how and why they ended employment, and most of them broke the law in how they hired me, too. Government employees lied to me in order to avoid releasing funds, and in order to suspend funds that would otherwise be released to me. Poor people haven't really stolen anything from me. Even when I wasn't poor, even when I was rich, because I was, for awhile... poor people didn't steal shit from me. The only people who stole anything from me were always way better off than I was. And they'd all done it using systems they'd set up and used on other people over and over again. Systems they'd perfected as part of their profession. It's truly been a totally shitty experience in the workplace. In all the workplaces. In the employment landscape.

HSF: not only manufacturing homelessness, but punishing applicants!

So, what is the HSF? It's a total joke. It's there to insult us. It'd be awesome to see the statistics on how many people have actually been eligible for HSF. What does it take to be eligible? Well, there's the criteria on their website, and then of course there's the critical bit of info they left out: they won't help you keep your current place unless you're facing eviction, and they won't help you move unless you're moving to a place with markedly lower rent. Apparently, if you can prove that you're facing eviction and your new rent is going to be pretty much the same, then they might provide funding. Might.

Also, it's a limited fund. So all HSF applicants are competing for the same money, and when it runs out, nobody's eligible anymore.

If you're moving into a new place where you DON'T have a lease (and, really, is anything in the range that's covered going to possibly involve a lease? yeah, I don't think so... hey, what a great place, only $475, I can afford that, can I see the lease please?) then you won't be able to get first and last. You'll be able to get one rent payment to move in. Why? Because apparently leaseholders aren't allowed to ask first and last from their subletters. Are you laughing out loud yet, or crying? So you can only get first and last if you can present them with the lease, with your name on it. Sounds like the same old chicken and the egg thing as ever, right? Sounds like the same old "I wonder if I can find a landlord who's gonna be cool with me being on benefits, and who's gonna be cool with talking about it on our first meeting, and identifying themselves to the government?" dilemma.

But especially the part about how you have to be moving to a cheaper place, in order to get the funds. That's really rich. The idea that we're gonna find cheaper places! I mean, just the comedy in that, goddamn it's terrible.

So, this is one of those application calls that you might want to have your social worker make. The staff at this particular office are really, especially hateful, judgemental, and rude. They're totally ready to spoil your month, not just by telling you all about how the HSF is set up to never be applicable to anyone, but also how your reasons for needing demonstrate what an irresponsible person you are. Really. They will point out exactly why you're wrong for expecting a bailout, and they'll do it in the rudest way possible. Almost like they've had training on how to push people over the edge and give them nervous breakdowns.

Meanwhile, other public servants, like caseworkers and stuff, all have no idea how limited the HSF criteria are, and how totally mean their staff are, so they're sending their clients to the HSF with totally crazy expectations, like... yeah, you might get offered subsidized housing next month, good thing there's the HSF to cover moving costs... NO THEY WON'T! Oh, had an injury and couldn't make it to soup kitchens for two months, had to spend the rent money on food, now I'm borrowing to make rent, now there's no food money for the next two months, good thing they're here to help me catch up on rent... NO THEY WON'T! Oh, had to replace my bike and all my clothes at the last minute and I'm outta rent money, good thing... NO THEY WON'T!

The HSF has been carefully crafted to create the perfect window dressing solution. It's there for the public to point at, grateful to have a municipal government that patches the holes created by the provincial one (like repeated slashing of benefits), and all the while, rather than preventing homelessness, it's promoting it. It's just crazy to think that people are being paid to tell us we can't get this benefit. If you call them up, try asking "have you granted the funds to anyone this week... or this month?" The fund actually depends on us finding cheaper rent than we already have, right at the time when we're being evicted. That's pretty fucked up.

The harshest thing though, is really the way they treat clients over the phone. If you ask too many questions, they keep saying they're going to talk with your ODSP worker, like it's a threat. I'm like, holy fuck, you evil, crazy person, if my ODSP worker ever heard a recording of this conversation, he'd whistle blow the shit out of your crazy office. Y'all need to get shut the fuck down right away for abusing Toronto residents.

The HSF is here to ruin our lives. So just know that. It's here to make you homeless. Or inspire you to suicide or something like that. Don't take the bait. Just realize, it's just another government organization that's trying to make you want to kill yourself. That's nothing new. The school system didn't make you do it, the justice system didn't make you do it, the stupid employment scene didn't make you do it, don't let HSF get you out of control. Just get your social worker to call them instead of doing it yourself. If you have anybody who can make phone calls like that on your behalf to shield you from being traumatized by other government workers (this is actually a common assignment for them), then do that. Don't make this call yourself. They're just that cruel, on the phone. They know exactly how to make you feel like scum.

Apparently what it's really designed to do is to help people in shelters to move into housing. It got touted as a replacement for Community Start-up, but anybody at the actual office that administrates it will tell you flat-out that that's not what it's supposed to be. It's not focused on helping people who are already housed to move, it's not focused on helping us recover from falling behind on bills and stuff, and it's not here to help us afford a new spot when we're getting kicked out - because there are no cheaper places, for any of us. Who here is going to pay less for their next bedroom than they currently pay? Nobody. No fucking person.

So, yeah. Fuck the HSF. Fuck everybody who contributed to designing the program. Fuck the staff for having any part in it. And especially, fuck the McGuinty/Wynne liberal piece of shit provincial government for their austerity bullshit. Talk about taking the province back to the dark ages. Shall I shovel your horse's shit too, me lady Wynne? Fuck her for promising to be the "social justice premier." Fuck her. What a total piece of shit. Fuck her. Fuck Dalton McGuinty even harder. What a fucking piece. Go to hell, Dalton McGuinty. Go to hell, Kathleen Wynne. And of course, go to hell, Miller, you scum-sucking reptile. I hope your children murder you in your sleep. I call a fatwa on your whole fucking clique. Die in horrendous pain while eating all of our shit, after it's been mixed together and fermented, and rot in hell forever. All three of you pieces of shit deserve to be lynched by an angry mob. And I hope it happens. I would be so fucking happy to see you three pieces of shit nailed to the highest post and left to rot in the sun while we throw shit at you. You fucking scumbags.