In step with the crisp winter air that swept into Toronto earlier this week, TAXI Canada has re-launched the 15 Below Project. In case you don't have time for the full background, TAXI's Creative Director Steve Mykolyn teamed up with Toronto-based designer Lida Baday last winter to develop a water-and-windproof jacket for the homeless. This unique coat was specially designed to have pockets that can be stuffed with old newspaper, which act as a......

Nearing the tail end of a year marked by mounting homelessness, an alarming spike in related deaths, and the continuing closure of an unacceptably high number of emergency hostels and shelters, a report published Tuesday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is a timely reminder that, yes, untold numbers of people in Toronto are being desperately, royally, systemically screwed. The culprit: woefully inadequate living wages for working families. According to the report, titled......

Photo by bigdaddyhame from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. The current economic turmoil has everyone spooked—even the fiscally conservative federal government has admitted they might need to run a deficit. Amidst all of the talk about the housing market collapse and bank bailouts, though, there's been one group that has received very little attention: charities. This isn't to say that absolutely nothing has been written about them, it’s just that their story hasn't gained traction......

Photo by Michael Chrisman from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Further to last week's post about a CFRB/zig advertising campaign paying homeless people to carry signs asking, "Should panhandling be illegal?" we received a comment attributed to Ben Rogovy, founder of US-based Bumvertising. Of the "bums," Rogovy said that "our advertisers are hired as independent contractors. We don't require them to work fixed hours, therefore we don't pay minimum wage." Ethical issues aside, we thought......

zig Executive Creative Director Martin Beauvais, to The National Post about his company's totally repulsive bumvertising campaign for CFRB: "We didn’t pay [the homeless people] thousands or hundreds. We paid them the kind of money they would make on the street because it would have been wrong to do more than that. We paid them something decent." And: "I don’t think it’s exploitive at all because we’ve asked people if they wanted to do it......

Remember during last year's TIFF, when Colin Farrell took a homeless man known as "Stress" on a $2,100 shopping spree and gave him $830 in cash to find a place to stay? The Sun reports today that Stress is now "clean and sober, has a comfy bachelor pad, goes to church and the Y and darts around town on a mountain bike," has "taken up yoga," and credits Farrell for giving him the help he......

Photo of NinjaX, by NinjaX, courtesy of NinjaX. Four days ago, a kid who calls himself NinjaX (real name? We don't care) set out to face hunger, "brutal weathers" (that mid-May zephyr can be vicious!), and "the risk of getting robbed/stabbed/raped/killed" (in that order, presumably). What does that spell? Homelessness! Or rather, NinjaX's Official Seven Day Homeless Adventure: "Stay tuned for lols." With only $20 to spend on survival—kind of commendable, actually, considering that's......

A protest outside the Toronto office of Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Thursday drew attention to the housing crisis in Canada, demanding that resources spent on military action in Afghanistan be diverted to provide an additional 1% of the federal budget for social housing.......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. "Take that word 'homeless' out, and use the word 'Jewish.' Would we be studying whether Jewish people could come......

Last week, Toronto-based advertising agency TAXI announced 15 Below, a new project to coincide with TAXI's fifteenth anniversary that would see the company create, manufacture, and distribute 3,000 coats for homeless people across North America. Designed by TAXI's executive creative director Steve Mykolyn and designer Lida Baday (pictured), the waterproof, windproof, and plentily-pocketed coat serves as a lightweight jacket during not-too-cold weather, can fold into a backpack during decent weather, and—when you fill the......

I was taking a few photos on Bay and Bloor a while back, trying to be unobvious about what I was doing. Turns out I didn't do so great of a job. When I got back home, I realized that the homeless guy on the right was staring at me. In every shot.......