Council calls for more beds
Motion to make more shelter spaces available passes over objections by Ford brothers
Over the objections of Mayor Rob Ford, Toronto’s council asked city officials on Thursday to “aim” to make more than 200 additional shelter beds available to the city’s homeless.
City officials say the shelter system is 96 per cent full on an average night, with 167 beds available. Ford cited those figures in arguing that the system has “more than enough” beds. But anti-poverty advocates and some shelter operators themselves say shelters have been regularly filled to capacity.
Beds are sometimes available only in shelters for particular population groups, only in shelters downtown, or only in “transitional” niche facilities not intended to serve as emergency housing. The city’s acting director of shelters, Phillip Abrahams, called the system “very tight.”
Council voted 36-3 in favour of a motion that instructed the city to pursue “the aim of achieving an occupancy rate no higher than 90 per cent in the short term.” Ninety per cent has been the city’s official goal for more than a decade.
The motion, worded cautiously, does not specify how the city should achieve that standard. It does say that officials should “consider” making immediately available all of the 172 shelter spaces that are currently activated during weather emergencies. It also says the city could “open additional sites and beds as necessary.”
Abrahams did not respond to a request to explain what he plans to do.
Mayor Rob Ford, Councillor Doug Ford and Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday cast the only votes against the motion.
“I want to get back to vote against it,” the mayor told reporters while taking a break from the meeting to attend the opening of Coca-Cola Canada’s new King St. offices. “We don’t need to have extra beds. We have more than enough beds. The report said that. No sense in having empty beds.” Councillor Joe Mihevc, who tabled the motion, said Ford is “out of step with what is happening on the streets in the city of Toronto.” Ontario Coalition Against Poverty leader John Clarke, whose group’s protests prodded council into action, said the city should designate an additional building as a shelter — such as Metro Hall or the Fort York Armoury — rather than adding emergency spaces at existing shelters. Emergency spaces are usually mats on the floor. “It has to be a new facility. If you go into overcrowded shelters and lay mats down on the floor in the common area and say ‘that’s your new beds,’ then all you’re doing is compounding the problem,” Clarke said. A 90-per-cent occupancy rate would require 384 available beds across the 3,836-bed, 57-shelter system. The cost of adding additional beds has not been disclosed. Mihevc suggested that the 90-percent occupancy target could be achieved without actually adding beds by giving more rent supplements for paid housing to people currently in the shelter system. With files from David Rider