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Mayor John Tory says he has a “deep concern” about the number of people sleeping on the streets of Toronto and the encampments that persistently pop up in the downtown.

“I don’t know how it can be a positive thing even for people who are going by who would like to feel a sense of pride in their own city, let alone visitors,” he said in an interview on Wednesday.

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“It’s not that I’m embarrassed about it. I mean I am embarrassed about it, but it’s more that I just feel, morally, surely we can do better than this.”

The extent of the problem confronts the mayor every day as he walks from the subway to city hall. There is one man who sleeps on a bench on University Avenue. One or two others seek shelter in a covered area near Osgoode Hall. The lineup that snakes around the corner for the law society’s free breakfast Thursday morning troubles him terribly, he said.

I don’t know how it can be a positive thing even for people who are going by who would like to feel a sense of pride in their own city, let alone visitors

Mr. Tory has called a meeting with rental housing developers to figure out what the city can do to get them building more affordable housing, but he says the issue is much bigger than anything the municipality can tackle on its own. For those who suffer from a mental illness, it’s a matter of proper health care, and that falls on the provincial government.