City’s count of people housed during COVID sparks frustration
Outreach workers say figure misleading as many were already on wait-lists before pandemic hit
Toronto says it’s moved more than 1,500 homeless people into permanent housing since mid-March as it’s battled COVID-19 — a nearly 50 per cent increase over the same period last year.
But some outreach workers say that figure doesn’t fairly represent Toronto’s pandemic-specific response, since more than 40 per cent were already on waitlists before the virus hit, and the number reflects the total instead of this year’s COVID-specific increase.
While the city says it has moved 1,570 people into permanent housing since mid-March, using rent-to-geared-income (RGI) assistance and housing allowances, last year during the same time period it moved 1,050 people using the same programs, according to data provided to the Star.
Coun. Joe Cressy, chair of Toronto’s board of health, said the city is spending $200 million on efforts to combat homelessness during COVID-19.
While he’s now confident that Ottawa and Queen’s Park will step in to assist with those costs, he said the city didn’t wait for confirmation of that aid before putting its plans in motion.
“What the number demonstrates, very clearly, is that the impediment to addressing chronic homelessness is not capacity, it’s resources and political will,” he said. “I think what’s happened since March here is the willingness to house people now, and keep the receipts for later.”
But the city’s count of people housed during COVID-19 has sparked frustration among some outreach workers, who believe it’s an unfair portrayal of how Toronto has handled homelessness during the pandemic — since the city was including individuals who were already on wait-lists, and touting its overall numbers instead of the increase over last year’s figure. “I think it’s incredibly disingenuous,” said Diana McNally, a co-ordinator with the Toronto Drop-In Network. “This is a communication piece that the city is using with some frequency.”
According to data provided to the Star by the city, 42.7 per cent of shelter residents permanently housed from midMarch to August had already applied for rent-geared-to-income (RGI) assistance or housing allowances before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
That percentage included all 326 shelter residents housed through RGI, who had spent an average of three-plus years on the wait-list. In the same period last year, the city housed 98 shelter residents through RGI assistance.
When it comes to housing allowances, 952 shelter residents were moved into permanent housing between March and August 2019, compared with 1,244 in 2020 — a 31 per cent increase.
“To kind of pretend that their usual operations, kind of lump that in with anything they might be doing because of COVID, is a false impression of what’s actually happening on the ground,” said Greg Cook, an outreach worker with Sanctuary Toronto.
Cook acknowledged that any shelter resident given permanent housing was a positive development. But he urged the city to examine why it was able to ramp up its efforts to house the homeless and whether that pace could be sustained after the pandemic subsides.
“They’re not building that many new RGI units, (Toronto Community Housing) units. So why have, all of a sudden, all these units come online?” he said.
Bruce Malloch, director of communications for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), said the city’s state of emergency allowed for some flexibility with the wait-list for subsidized housing.
Sheila Penny, COO of TCHC, said the crisis allowed them to focus solely on moving shelter residents into their RGI units in recent months. Normally, shelter residents only accounted for one in every seven new community housing tenants, she said.
Vacancy in RGI units is typically between one and two per cent, according to Malloch. In non-pandemic times, some of those units can linger vacant after turnover — for painting, repairs, or demolition. People on the wait-list also don’t have to take the first unit they’re offered, and some were harder than others to fill, Malloch said. Those are the units they’ve looked to occupy since the pandemic hit.
“We didn’t have to find vacant units. They were there,” he said.
Both Malloch and Penny noted that tenants who moved in during COVID-19 also had smoother transitions, as TCHC had an agreement with the city during the pandemic that arranged for wraparound supports — to provide things like furniture, clothing and other social support when that person moved in.
“This is something that we don’t want to end,” Penny said.
That agreement is set to stop when Toronto’s state of emergency ends. After that, Penny said, it’s a question of whether the city would continue to fund the support agencies’ work.
Cressy, who told the Star he was “sympathetic” to the idea that the city should do more to combat homelessness, said the challenge now was to not let attention on the issue lapse. The reason waiting lists had moved quicker lately was because they spent new money, he added. “If we return to the broken status quo, we will have let our city and our residents down,” Cressy said. “I’m increasingly hopeful that … COVID could prove the jumping point to lasting housing solutions.”
Malloch expressed a similar hope. “The feeling at Toronto Community Housing is that we’re not going to go back to the old way of doing things,” he said. “We want to keep the momentum going after things go back to whatever the new normal is, and the emergency is lifted.”
“They’re not building that many new RGI units, (Toronto Community Housing) units. So why have, all of a sudden, all these units come online?”
GREG COOK SANCTUARY TORONTO