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In the coming weeks, 51 high-needs and recently homeless tenants will begin moving into the modular studio apartments of Dunn House in Parkdale. When shovels went into the ground a couple of years ago, this site was a parking lot.

The endeavour, funded by all levels of government and operated by Fred Victor, under the auspices of the University Health Network (UHN), might be a drop in the unhoused bucket — there are 7,800 homeless in Toronto, according to city data, and upwards of 10,000 using the shelter system on a nightly basis. But it’s an innovative start in alleviating the pressures of a societal plague that feels beyond our collective capacity to mitigate.

So who’s won the lottery?

“There’s no perfect algorithm in a sea of inequity where people have been on housing lists for eight to 10 years,” said Boozary, the founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at UHN.

“We’ve lost three people who were designated to move in. That speaks to the mortality and morbidity facing people who are unhoused.”

Tenants will be on rent-geared-to-income leases. For most, that means 30 per cent of their disability support assistance. “I don’t want people saying this is quote-unquote free housing,” Boozary stressed. “They’re paying rent.”

Sifting through potential tenants, those in acute and urgent need were prioritized. “A lot of people have been deprived, have been living in poverty, have been shouting for health-care access for 20, 30 years or more. It’s not going to change their health profile overnight. But this is the commitment and the space to try to shift their trajectories.”

Boozary will hate if I make this story about him, though you won’t find a more dedicated solutions-driven advocate for the impoverished and vulnerable in this city. So I’ll let him spit out some of the grim statistics: “People who are chronically unhoused live about half as long as housed people. From a cost perspective, we can’t afford the status quo, which is over $30,000 a month if the patient is staying in the hospital. It’s close to $11,000 in the prison system, which is the de facto mental health system, $6,000 to $7,000 in the shelter system and roughly $4,000 a month in cost for supportive housing. When you’re homeless, you’re three to four times more likely to have a chronic disease or cancer. For the folks who are in that situation, the options right now are inhumane and far too costly to the public.”

The top 100 UHN patients with no fixed address accounted for 4,309 emergency department visits in a single year. “For someone with diabetes or a chronic disease and they don’t know where they’re going to sleep that night, how can you manage and control your blood sugars? The complications of poorly treated diabetes result in cardiovascular disease, which leads to stroke and amputation.”

It’s impossible to disconnect the hospital bed crisis from the housing crisis. “There are people languishing right now in a hospital bed who are not able to leave because they don’t have access to supportive housing. That is a major piece here in terms of where we are offering permanence.”

The units at Dunn House resemble modest Airbnb lettings, with kitchenette, bed, private bathroom, storage (a major complaint of shelter users is that they’re victimized by thieving), large windows to let the sun in and precious privacy. They can turn the lock and be safe. Some of the apartments are designed for wheelchair mobility. Pets are welcome.

There’s a communal kitchen and dining room as well, an on-site nurse, a clinical room, a 24/7 virtual emergency department connected to UHN, psychiatric services and addiction and harm reduction services for those who want it. And of course, Boozary will be frequently present as an attending physician.

Unlike shelters, there are no rules against alcohol and drug use.

“It’s not abstinence-based,” said Boozary. “I would argue people do not need to be sober to deserve housing.”

The integrated support system offers options for those who want to break their addictions.

“Part of this work is how you best support people where they’re at,” Boozary continued. “For a lot of people who have wanted to get help for a substance use disorder, it’s really hard to access. We’re trying to break through some of those silos and the obstacles for people, right where they live.

“Some just don’t trust the system, right? So this is a trust-building exercise for both the city and the hospital.”

These are hard times for just about everybody in Toronto, families are struggling. Why should we care about the well-being of strangers?

“Many of us are not that far away from not being able to afford our rent. It’s not rocket science that homelessness increases when people face eviction, when they’re having to live in their cars, and they’ve never even thought about that reality before. What’s playing out now in this city is awful, people living in impossible conditions, and it’s about survival.

“So I think we have to collectively give a damn.”

Dunn House revolves around the concept of centring human dignity, yoked to secure housing, even re-engineering the homeless so they can take care of themselves after existing for a long time in hazardous, dehumanizing conditions. It is a morally and financially prudent alternative to transience and helter-skelter crisis management.

“When you look at the data internationally, every dollar in supportive housing can have a dollar and a half back for the system and the investment,” said Boozary.

Boozary may be tilting at windmills but he’s crunched the numbers logically. What he envisions is more Dunn Houses, lots of Dunn Houses.

“Fifty-one units is not mission accomplished. It won’t make a major dent. But we don’t want Dunn House to be singular. What we see as success is that this is scaled not only in º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøbut across the country.

“Am I a Pollyanna?”

He waves his hand across a building where a parking lot once stood.

“This is concrete. This is real.”