Winter always brings a heightened sense of urgency for Toronto's homeless yet few useful solutions. This year, the evidence that we need more emergency shelters has never been stronger.

While we wait, seemingly forever, for a national housing program to be announced homelessness has only worsened.

Across Canada people have been abandoned outside. In Toronto, hundreds, maybe a thousand people are forced to live outside in parks, ravines, under bridges and on city sidewalks. The situation meets the World Health Organization definition of a humanitarian disaster.

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Eighteen years is a long time. I woke up this morning to realize that 18 years ago, on October 8, 1998 the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee launched its State of Emergency Declaration declaring homelessness a national disaster. Today, the entire country awaits a national housing program to alleviate the disaster.

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NIMBY, the acronym for "Not In My Backyard," refers to people's objections to an unwanted development coming to their neighbourhood.

I call it discrimination. It's a vile form of speaking and acting fuelled by ignorance, fear and hate. NIMBY has been used for years against people of colour, people with disabilities, people with mental health issues, the LGBTQ community, various religious groups and people who are homeless.

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We didn’t need to see the Hollywood film Spotlight to know that investigative journalism makes a difference in the court of public opinion and social policy. Spotlight is the 2016 Oscar-winning film that chronicles the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, which exposed the conspiracy between the Boston Archdiocese, lawyers and government officials to hide the extensive pedophilia by Catholic priests.