Ottawa continues to experience a high demand for emergency shelter, now exacerbated by the pressures of irregular migration.

MAYOR JIM WATSON, in a letter to Premier Doug Ford.

Local families who become homeless are competing with asylum seekers for emergency shelter spots as Mayor Jim Watson appeals to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Premier Doug Ford for funding to handle the influx of newcomers to Ottawa.

Watson wasted no time after Ford won the Ontario election in asking for provincial funding as the City of Ottawa continues to handle hundreds of asylum seekers entering Canada from the United States.

Watson’s first wrote to Ford on June 15 and re-sent the letter Thursday.

“Ottawa continues to experience a high demand for emergency shelter, now exacerbated by the pressures of irregular migration,” Watson says in the letter to Ford.

According to the city, between Aug. 10, 2017, and June 30, 2018, the city’s family shelters had 405 placement requests from asylum seekers arriving in Ottawa from the U.S.

Of those, 112 families were placed in a shelter and 140 individuals were referred to community shelters. Other families were referred to community resources, friends or family.

Watson pointed out that the city had a $5.7-million budget deficit last year for emergency shelters.

“The ability to respond to the current increased demand for shelter placement is hampered by the lack of capacity,” Watson told Ford. “This is affecting not only asylum seekers, but also families who have destabilized locally, households moving to Ottawa from other cities and provinces and other newcomers entering Canada through regular immigration channels.”

Watson sent a similar letter to the prime minister Friday.

The city wants reimbursement for all costs for providing shelter to asylum seekers, including costs for housing subsidies offered to those newcomers.

Most asylum seekers are entering illegally into Canada through Quebec at the U.S. border. In 2017, there was a large inflow of Haitians to Quebec and in 2018 there has been an increase in the number of Nigerians crossing the border.

While the federal Liberals made $11 million available to Ontario for costs related to the influx of asylum seekers, Ford’s Progressive Conservative government this week criticized the federal government for being lax on illegal border crossings, calling on the upper level of government to fund all costs related to asylum claimants in Ontario.

On Friday, Ontario Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said the province isn’t withdrawing from any agreement on immigration. MacLeod, the minister responsible for immigration, said she hasn’t discussed agreements with her federal counterparts.

Since last year, 5,500 asylum seekers have entered Ontario after crossing into Canada, MacLeod said.

The federal government has been trying to get a handle on the capacity of Ontario cities to accept asylum seekers. Ideally, the federal government wants to open a reception centre in Ontario to triage asylum seekers, but it needs to work in partnership with the provincial government.

“Over the past year, we have also worked closely with Quebec to ensure that adequate resources are in place and that every action is taken to reduce the impacts on provincial social services,” according to Mathieu Genest, press secretary for federal Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen. “We are ready to recreate this model in Ontario, and we need the collaboration of the provincial government.”

The recent strain on the City of Ottawa’s family shelters was exposed late last winter in a report to council. The number of chronically homeless families — those who have been homeless for at least six months over one year — went from 87 in 2016 to 236 in 2017. The average length of stay in shelters for those families increased from 251 days to 262 days.

Janice Burelle, the city’s general manager of community and social services, said newcomers to Canada typically account for 30 to 35 per cent of the shelter population. There was an increase in requests from refugee claimants in 2017, but they levelled off between last November and March. The numbers started increasing again in April, Burelle said.

The city has two family shelters. Coun. Mark Taylor, the mayor’s special liaison for housing, has said the shelters are in “a state of degradation.”

When the city runs out of shelter space in city-run buildings and facilities run by outside agencies, it rents motel and hotel rooms. The average nightly occupancy of families in motel or hotel shelter units in 2016 was 92. In 2017, the nightly average increased to 182.

There’s a larger discussion happening about how governments fund shelters and affordable housing, but for now the city must solve the immediate overflow problem.

“The City of Ottawa is closely monitoring the situation,” Burelle said in an email. “City staff are working closely with partners exploring options for families seeking shelter in Ottawa.”