Thank goodness, common sense prevails.

📢 New study on #COVID19 burden among #homeless in Toronto is now in PLOS One. Researchers scrambled in the early days to publish ASAP to respond to the pandemic. But 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 can be 𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲, & mess with our understanding of virulence, fatality & Long COVID. A short thread 🧵

I was just thinking this today. Headed breakneck speed toward Gilead, Maddaddam, or (more likely) some horrible hybrid of the two. I wonder sometimes if @margaretatwood.bsky.social is actually a time traveler prevented by time paradox from just telling us what's coming.

It's bonkers that #ldnont doesn't have 24hr warming centers in the dead of Canadian winter. For sure, let's do the longterm solutions eg affordable/supportive housing. But don't forget to do what's needed to make sure homeless folks survive til then... www.ctvnews.ca/london/artic...

Finally, a half decent estimate for how many folks are homeless in Ontario. You can't fix what you can't even measure. AMO shouldn't have to do this. The data sources are all administrative, so Ontario (or the feds) could have produced something like this all along.

"We don't want to punish people" --> proceeds to outline life changing punishments & little else. Are we honestly still doing "war on drugs" style approaches to homelessness in the year of our Lord 2025?? Jesus.

Lovely to see tidbits of London Cares' House of Hope evaluation. Looking forward to the report. ⬇️ overdoses, ⬆️ quality of life & stabilization metrics. Shocking % of deaths though (a tableau of the long term effects of homelessness - treat, yes, but also: prevent!) lfpress.com/news/local-n...

I'm all for using whatever's needed to support evidence based policy, but I get uneasy at times with these "but it affects you too" arguments (though I've used them too). It should be enough that people will die, and that these services are essential to recovery (survive until ready for treatment)

So many lazy stereotypes about homelessness that don't represent the realities of the majority living it. And they drive policy - even with tons of evidence to the contrary! "Evidence-based policy" is so 1990s. What the social media era needs is skilled storytelling to challenge those narratives