Advocates demand more emergency shelter space for unhoused Torontonians amid extreme heat | CBC News

Advocates are calling on the the City of Toronto to provide more emergency shelter spaces for unhoused people, saying its heat relief strategy is not realistic in extreme weather.

Members of Shelter and Housing Justice Network, an advocacy group, said on Monday the situation facing unhoused people in Toronto is dire. On the city’s Shelter System Requests for Referrals webpage, the city says an average of 231 people were unable to secure a shelter bed nightly in June.

Greg Cook, an outreach worker at Sanctuary Ministries of Toronto, said the city’s shelters are full.

“People have nowhere to go during extreme weather. The city isn’t even doing the bare minimum,” Cook said, speaking at a news conference near the city’s shelter central intake office on Peter Street.

Dr. Paige Homme, chair of Health Providers Against Poverty, told reporters that the “egregious lack of shelter and housing” is a public health emergency.

“This situation is not only untenable, it’s deadly and it’s dangerous,” Homme said. 

Advocates are calling on the city council’s executive committee, which meets Tuesday, to: open available space it owns, including community centres; lease private buildings; draft a plan to create at least 300 to 400 shelter spaces by the end of the month; open cooling centres across the city with surge capacity for extreme heat; and impose a moratorium on encampment clearing.

Donovan Huycke, a person experiencing homelessness, told CBC Toronto in an interview that he has been living at the Allan Gardens encampment near Carlton and Jarvis Streets for two weeks.

“Tim Hortons actually just started kicking people out unless you’re actually purchasing something so I go in and spend 20 cents on a cup, get some water and sit in there for 15 minutes and then I leave,” Huycke said.

Senior city official says more needs to be done

In response to their calls, the city pointed to its heat relief strategy, saying in an email to CBC Toronto it aims to reduce heat-related illness and death due to extreme heat, with a focus on vulnerable groups, including unhoused people. 

As part of the strategy, which runs from May 15 to September 30 each year, the city activates what it calls its heat relief network, which consists of more than 600 locations throughout Toronto. This includes libraries, community centres and pools, as well as drop-ins and spaces provided by several private and non-profit organizations, including some shopping malls, senior centres and YMCA locations.

During extreme heat, the city said it and its partners deploy additional street outreach teams to check on unhoused people, hand out water and encourage people to go indoors. The city said it also activates additional spaces to help get as many people inside when heat is extreme.

In a statement Monday, Gord Tanner, the city’s general manager of Toronto Shelter and Support Services, said the shelter system is under enormous pressure.

“We recognize the challenges created by the unprecedented demand for shelter space we are experiencing in Toronto. Factors like the housing crisis, rising cost of living and the record number of refugee claimants arriving in need of emergency shelter are all contributing to the strain on the City of Toronto’s shelter system,” Tanner said.

“We know the summer heat can have dire consequences for those living outside and more needs to be done to help those experiencing homelessness. Pressures continue to mount and solutions can’t be achieved alone.”

Mayor ‘working to unlock additional spaces’

Arianne Robinson, spokesperson for Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, said in an email to CBC Toronto Chow is “working to unlock additional spaces.”

Robinson said Chow secured funding commitments from the federal and provincial governments for the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit (COHB) to move people out of shelters into permanent housing. Last year, the city housed 6,130 people through the program. 

In March, Robinson said the funding stopped and the city has to seek additional funding from the federal and provincial governments.

“In the long term, the Mayor is committed to building more affordable, non-profit and rent-geared-to-income housing,” she said.

According to the city’s Shelter System Flow Data, an estimated 10,627 people in Toronto were “actively homeless” in the last three months, while its Daily Shelter and Overnight Service Usage webpage says 9,842 people used its shelter system on Sunday.