Toronto is headed into a winter that promises to be as harsh as last year’s. The city has already seen record-setting early snowfalls. Shelters, respite centres, 24-hour drop-ins, even referral centres are operating at or beyond capacity most nights, and it’s only mid-fall.

Many places of worship and individuals contribute privately to help bridge the ever-widening gaps in the social safety net. Often they gather donations for the purpose, then use the money to buy supplies such as socks, granola bars, water bottles, Tim Hortons gift cards, etc. They assemble them into packages that are redistributed to worshippers who, in turn, give them to homeless people and panhandlers.

This is a wonderful, generous practice. It comes from a place of compassion and giving that I respect with everything in me. Because I respect it, and the money and time private individuals put into it, I want to give some input.

I spent years homeless. I got truly secure housing for the first time in 18 years two months ago. I’ve worked through many winters outside, and received more of these packages than I can count. I’ve seen many, many others get them as well.

From this experience, I’ve drawn some observations and conclusions. You see, with a few small changes, more of the things in these packages could, and would, be more helpful to more people.

It’s such a beautiful thing; I want to help it be as effective as possible.

Most of these packages have socks. We love socks. I can’t tell you how much.

However, there are two issues with the socks in these packages. The first is that they tend to be very inexpensive tube sweat socks. A person who hasn’t showered in days, whose boots are almost constantly wet, and who is often walking around for a couple of days at a time can walk holes through a pair of those socks in two days. Even if they don’t, at the end of two days the socks are so stiff with sweat and salt and meltwater that laundering them is useless. They have to be thrown out.

The other issue is that almost inevitably, the socks are men’s size 10-12. Unfortunately, roughly half the people on the street are women, and most of us have much smaller feet than that. I cannot wear men’s size 10-12 sweat socks because they bunch up and give me blisters every time.

A 12-pack of those socks costs $9.99 — for $1.50 more, one can buy six pairs of work socks, 50 per cent wool, at Dollarama. One of those pairs of work socks will last at least five to seven days of constant walking without laundering. Wear them for three days and hand-wash them in a sink somewhere; once they’re dry, they’re wearable again. They also sell them in women’s sizes. I discovered these last fall and wore them while car panning through all but the very coldest days of the winter. I’m still wearing the same pairs. These socks last. They give you more bang for your buck, even if there are only half as many pairs, because each pair lasts three to four times as long. Also, they’re way warmer than sweat socks.

The vast majority of these packages contain water bottles. Again, we love water. But we love it much more in the summer. We drink hot beverages any chance we get in winter, to raise our core temperatures. But the disposable spring water bottles sold in cases at every grocery store are actively undesirable in the winter, for the following reasons: we get a lot of them, and the weight really adds up on top of all the other weight we carry around. People don’t need nearly as much liquid to stay hydrated in the winter, anyway. Finally, in sub-zero temperatures, the water chills, turns to slush, and freezes solid, sometimes in as little as half an hour. Drinking slush water in the cold can be dangerous, because it lowers one’s core temperature. It’s also very unpleasant.

Again, Dollarama has the cheapest solutions I know of. They sell refillable water bottles for as little as a dollar each (and cheap thermal mugs, too!) Those are light; we can carry them around, fill them as needed, and, unlike the disposable bottles, in a pinch we can fill them with a hot beverage without the plastic warping or melting immediately.

I have received uncounted numbers of Mylar emergency blankets. They make a frequent appearance in these packages. I have never seen a single person discover a real use for them in urban Canada. They don’t hold heat in the wind, humidity and cold. They rip, so they can’t be used as ground sheets. For the same reason, they can’t be effectively used to provide a tent with shelter from the snow. They honestly have no purpose in the life of a homeless person. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, because I’m not. But it’s the truth.

I swear, I’m not getting paid by Dollarama! But … they sell tarps. Cheap tarps. Four-by-eight-foot size for $3 to $4. A four-by-eight-foot tarp will shelter a tent or be an effective groundsheet. Dollar Tree sells four-by-six-footers for $1.25 each. They’re a cheaper material, but far better than Mylar. Those are about the right size for a person to use under their sleeping bag to keep the wet from seeping up from the ground, and another on top of them to keep the wind and snow off.

As I said, this is going to be a bad winter — again. The City of Toronto says it cannot afford to create enough beds to shelter those who need it. To compound the problems created by that policy, the city has made it illegal for people to camp, shelter, etc., in “public spaces.” I’m not sure what the city intends for the hundreds of people who can’t find a bed every night to do. Just walk around, I suppose, all night, every night, all winter, and hope they’ll be able to catch a few catnaps during the day somewhere before they have to do it all again.

People can’t survive for months doing that. So we find ways around it. Drop-ins and NGOs are allowed to distribute sleeping bags, but handing out tents or tarps — anything that can be used effectively to keep the wind and wet off — threatens their municipal funding. One of the greatest gifts any homeless person can receive is the means by which to create their own shelter, their own relatively safe space, out of the weather and the worst of the cold. Tents are not cheap things, to us. Even the inexpensive ones often cost more than we make in a day. And saving up for anything is hard when you’re sleeping rough. Trust me on this.

So if there are people who want to do more, consider cheap three- or four-man tents (big enough for two people and their knapsacks). It is no joke or exaggeration when I say that a cheap tent can be the difference between frostbite and no frostbite, or even between life and death.

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We love that people make these packages up. Everyone appreciates the kind and compassionate impulses that drive their creation and distribution. That’s why (now that I’ve found a way out of panning again, hopefully for good, and so have the time to do it!) I hope to encourage people to think from a slightly different angle about how the money and time that go into this can be spent to maximize the hoped-for results: helping some of the city’s most vulnerable residents make it through the hardest time of the year.

Whatever you do, though, please know we see it and appreciate it — even if we’re in no condition to communicate it to you at the time. For all the times I couldn’t say it — thank you. Thank you all, very much.

Meg Inwood is a Toronto writer and advocate for social justice issues such as homelessness and housing, poverty, and the opioid crisis.

Update — Monday, Nov. 18, 2019:

Thank you to our readers for such a strong response to Meg Inwood’s story. For those looking to donate items to a Toronto agency, below are links to the maps of city drop-in centres, shelters and respite sites.

A quick call to the agency or agencies you wish to support is always encouraged, as they can tell you what they need the most, and to make sure donations end up in the right place

Thank you, Toronto.

Drop-ins: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/homeless-help/#dropin

Emergency shelters: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/homeless-help/#shelters

24-7 respite sites: https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/homeless-help/#respitesites

Below are agencies who provide medical and even palliative supports for marginalized people across the city.

Street Health: https://www.streethealth.ca/

Inner City Health Associates: http://www.icha-toronto.ca/programs/peach