By Dimitrije Martiovic
Toronto’s housing crisis demands urgent, sustained coverage. Focus Media Arts Centre, an LJI participant, amplifies frontline voices and holds policymakers accountable. Without civic journalism, systemic failures remain hidden, and urgent demands go unheard.
A new report from SHJN and TUHU condemns Toronto’s response to homelessness, citing 766 deaths in three years, including 135 in early 2024. At a press conference, advocates Lynn Walker and Jennifer Jewell exposed the dangers unhoused people face, especially those with disabilities.
The report outlines 29 urgent demands, including 24/7 warming centers, rent-geared-to-income housing, and accessibility reforms. In Regent Park and Downtown East, poverty and housing instability deepen the crisis. Without action, more lives will be lost.
This is not just about housing—it’s a human rights crisis. Covering human rights stories in civic journalism holds institutions accountable, amplifies marginalized voices, and drives action. It shifts issues like homelessness from charity to accountability, exposing systemic failures and demanding change. Without this coverage, crises remain invisible, and injustice persists.
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About LJI
LJI Impact is the section of commediaportal.ca where the journalists and their organizations participating in CACTUS' Local Journalism Initiative can share their greatest successes.
Through the written stories, photos and videos you see in the LJI Impact section, you'll be able to read first hand accounts about how the presence of a community journalist is making a difference in communities across Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative and the Community Media Portal.
The Community Media Portal is a gateway to the audio-visual media created by community media centres across Canada. These include traditional community TV and radio stations, as well as online and new media production centres.
Community media are not-for-profit production hubs owned and operated by the communities they serve, established both to provide local content and reflection for their communities, as well as media training and access for ordinary citizens to the latest tools of media production, whether traditional TV and radio, social and online media, virtual reality, augmented reality or video games.
The Community Media Portal has been funded by the Local Journalism Initiative (the LJI) of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) in association with the Fédération des télévisions communautaires autonomes du Québec (the Fédération). Under the LJI, over 100 journalists have been placed in underserved communities and asked to produce civic content that underpins Canadian democratic life.
