Homeless shelter shortage is a crisis

Re Homeless centre closed by mistake, Sept. 28 Toronto’s homeless shelters are so full that they operate at nearly 100-per-cent capacity every night, turning people away.

The Streets to Homes referral centre on Peter St. was built to help facilitate people accessing other shelters. Every night, people sleep on mats, the floor and in chairs in the lobby of the referral centre, with nowhere else to go.

There is an increasing demand for shelter in this city, as people have less and less access to affordable housing. It is the city’s role to provide emergency accommodation to meet the needs of people who have found themselves without shelter.

The city needs to open an emergency shelter to meet this increasing need. Offering space on a chair, a lobby or a hallway in lieu of a shelter bed is not humane and does not meet the city’s own shelter policies.

The crisis in the shelter system has been growing for more than a decade. The hard-fought-for, 24-hour drop-in centres for women, created to give vulnerable women a safe space after a series of sexual assaults, are also now turning women away because they don’t have the space. They were never intended to be shelters but they have become so.

It is city policy that shelters do not exceed 90-per-cent occupancy. It never meets this target and instead turns people away.

As a harm-reduction worker, I have called the central info line for shelter beds many times.

Most recently, it took more than an hour to talk to someone and there were no beds available. So I sent my client to the referral centre in the hopes he would get a bed. Instead, this elderly man with major pain issues and heath vulnerabilities was forced to sleep on the floor of the lobby.

The city needs to add 1,000 beds immediately to the shelter system, stop turning people away and meet its own 90per-cent shelter occupancy target. This is a crisis. Zoe Dodd, harm reduction worker, Toronto