Toronto’s refugees deserve proper housing

Re Re: Shelter Crisis: Refugees Need Beds,

Editorial, Oct. 25 I am most concerned about Toronto’s crisis in affordable housing for the refugees being welcomed to our city. It is a fundamental human right for all people to have a place to live.

As your editorial states, we must “help newcomers integrate and succeed.” This starts with having an adequate, clean living space. Why is it acceptable to spend $20 million to extend hotel and motel contracts into 2018 to house refugee claimants? Hotels and motels offer a bed to sleep, not proper space for daily living. Why not put money into a longterm solution? As caring Torontonians, is this the best we can provide for refugees who arrive in personal turmoil?

The Fred Victor Centre is housing some of our vulnerable citizens in the former athletes’ residence from the Pan-Am Games. What a visionary approach to help the marginalized. How wonderful to provide a new, clean living space to the vulnerable.

If we truly want to help refugees, I believe we need to do better. With all the condos being built, why can’t city council mandate that developers set aside 10 per cent of units for inclusionary zoning?

Refugees are part of humanity. They have a right to housing, like everyone else, and deserve to be treated with thoughtful respect if they are to integrate and succeed. Shari Baker, Toronto