‘They just want to play together. They don’t understand COVID-19’
Child homelessness has persisted in Toronto for years, but it’s an issue that’s grown increasingly complicated during the coronavirus pandemic. A look inside the shelters: ‘It’s very, very hard’
At a homeless shelter in Scarborough, an eightyear-old boy scurries through the halls with his friends until late at night — sometimes 10 or 11 p.m., much later than the 8 p.m. bedtime his mother wants. With more than 100 kids in the building, it’s tough to fight the lure of other voices outside their room.
Enforcing a routine in the shelter system is difficult, 35-year-old Nana Hornila says. She’s lived in the facility for more than a year, with her son and one-year-old daughter. It’s a far cry from their old home in Cameroon, where she could wake, feed and put her son to bed on a consistent schedule. “It’s very, very hard,” she said. She wanted to give her kids a better life in Canada. But she struggled to find housing after they arrived, without immediate access to documents like pay stubs or family to help. So, she and her kids wound up in the shelter system, searching for a way out on their own while juggling the restrictions of a global pandemic.
They aren’t alone. Through a summer of COVID-19, more than1,000 children were staying in
Toronto’s homeless shelters — 1,020, as of July 1. Nearly 70 per cent are 10 years old or younger. Official numbers don’t include kids living in provincial shelters for abused women, nor children whose parents have found a place for them to stay outside of the shelter network.
Child homelessness has persisted in Toronto for years, but it’s an issue that’s grown increasingly complicated during the pandemic, which has particularly threatened congregate settings like shelters.