Ryan Donais started building the small modular homes this summer as he watched the city’s housing crisis becoming more dire. He said he didn’t want to go through another winter seeing people living on the streets, so he put his background in construction to use.

“I just don’t see any changes. It’s been many years with people outside and it’s not changing. I couldn’t imagine being outside for years, you know?”

Since then, Donais has built three homes at a cost of about $10,000 each, most of which has been paid for through donations to his GoFundMe page.

    • Voroxpete
      1·
      3 days ago

      In those situations you have an address, but mail intended for that address is placed at a holding location (usually a communal post box at the end of the lane) for you to collect. But it’s not like your drivers license says “PO BOX 12345678”. You still have a physical address that corresponds to a particular residence at a particular place.

      The question is, if a cop needed to arrest you, where would they go? If a bank needed to send a lawyer to serve you papers, where would they go? What side of the local municipal and county boundaries are you on? Whose jurisdiction are you under? These are the things that matter when you’re using an address for legal purposes. It’s not just about where mail goes.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        1·
        3 days ago

        Where I grew up we had PO BOX as our address, not at end of street, but at the town’s Post office. Drivers license had PO BOX because that is how you would get mailed citations or new license. I am familiar with the rental style POBOX you reference, but these were municipal govt post boxes.

        Ironically they renumbered our streets after about 30 years so the address changed LOL

        As far as policing, I’m in Canada so we had provincial police, and province Im in now and others use federal police, so the jurisdiction stuff didn’t apply

        • Voroxpete
          1·
          3 days ago

          Sure, whatever I’m saying here is never going to apply identically everywhere.

          At the end of the day, we’re talking about homeless people in Toronto, so it’s not particularly helpful or applicable.

          • BCsven@lemmy.ca
            2·
            3 days ago

            Right, agreed. My initial point was some cities create a street address to represent the homeless encampment (or homeless people), and the homeless number their tents. This was so that support systems or jobs that need something on a form for processing get satisfied, and homeless get mail if needed. I sure hope somebody comes up with a better method of the housing issues. Here in BC the cities have bought up old hotels and converted them to low barrier housing, but it doesn’t address all their needs like mental health care, drug rehabilitation, etc