Homeless people with hefty fines get help from law students

People living on the streets can rack up hundreds — even thousands — of dollars in fines for loitering, drinking in public, and other infractions, so a group of law students is helping relieve them of that debt.

After spending years homeless in Toronto, Gordon Rea ended up with nearly $7,500 in unpaid fines, most of which he doesn't even remember getting.

"I was in what alcoholics refer to — and the experts — as a blackout," he told host Robyn Bresnahan on CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning. "Knowing me, I probably just ripped them up and threw them away, not thinking of the consequences."

Rea got sober in 2013, and started getting calls from a collection agency about unpaid fines for infractions including public intoxication, drinking in public places, having open liquor, and trespassing. 

He paid a few on his own, but when he went to the courthouse in Toronto to take care of the rest, he learned the total was in the thousands.

"I was … devastated is the word. First of all, I was in no position to pay it," he said.

So he turned to a drop-in legal clinic run by Osgoode Hall law students called Fair Change, where he met Daniel Ciarabellini.

"What we do at the Fair Change clinic primarily is simply put a human face on all of this," said Ciarabellini. 

Fines try to 'extract blood from stone'

"Pretty much none of these types of tickets are ever fought. People receive them, and then they throw them away, and the city simply never collects the debt, and it's just a strike on somebody's credit score. Very few people ever escape the streets."

Rea was trying to turn his life around, but that huge debt on his record made getting a job or a stable place to live difficult. Ciarabellini successfully argued in court to have all of his fines dropped.

Both Rea and Ciarabellini came to Ottawa this week to speak at a conference on legal issues facing the homeless at the University of Ottawa.

"The point of these fines are not supposed to be punitive. They're not supposed to be a punishment. They're supposed to be deterrents," said Ciarabellini.

"But when you bring someone before the court — especially someone like Gord — who has gotten off the street, they've already pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they're no longer offending, there's nothing to deter them for. They were a different person then than they are today. And the court sees that it's not right to try to extract blood from a stone."