Close your eyes and imagine …. actually DON’T close your eyes or you won’t be able to read this….. Imagine that it’s late at night, you’ve just left your friends at the bar and are now walking home alone through the dark streets when you spot a group of rowdy men up ahead who seem like they’ve had way to much to drink. This isn’t a situation where you feel you need to call the police but, it is a situation in which you don’t want to walk home alone – just in case. Luckily you spot a payphone across the street and nervously head towards it while digging into your pockets for change. After inserting the coins you begin to dial the number only to realize that there wasn’t a dial tone. The payphone doesn’t work between the hours of 6pm to 6am.

This is a reality that many Canadians face around the country, where local neighbourhood  payphones now have restricted hours due to uneducated city counselors who actually believe that restricting payphone hours will deter drug dealing and prostitution. I seriously can’t believe that anyone would believe that payphones and prostitution and/or drug dealing go together. For starters, most drug dealers have their own phones (wouldn’t be much of a business – even an illegal one – if they didn’t), plus prostitutes who work the streets most often meet their clientele on the streets rather than on the phone – and vice versa for their johns – so the prostitution excuse can go right out the window.

Even if payphones are somehow a draw for sex workers and drug dealers, that shouldn’t override the 88% of low income Canadians that rely on pay phones for other reasons (such as social and emergency calls), nor should we use our morals to discriminate against drug dealers or sex workers – especially not when the Toronto Police department opened up a sex worker tip and reporting line (both of which are restricted by payphones in neighbourhoods with a high population of street sex workers). Not having access to a payphone is a HUGE safety risk as well as blatant discrimination against low or no income individuals.

According to a survey conducted by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre over half (59%) of  low-income people surveyed said that they use payphones once a week, while a further  22% said that they use payphones daily. The act of restricting pay phones during certain hours (always day time hours), does so much damage to low income people who may need the phone to call the doctor, shelter, family, friend, social service, work, or some other place, as well as the rest of the population who may need the phone to call a cab, family, friend, etc., especially at nighttime when their isn’t as much people around.

I wonder how many people have been mugged, or physically attacked because they have been unable to make a call.