It’s getting cold again, and Toronto paramedics are responding to calls about frozen bodies on the street. It’s a sad winter tradition here in Toronto, and it owes largely to the unacceptable state of our city’s shelter system.
In late November, Ontario’s Conservative government announced their social assistance “reform.” It includes more barriers to qualifying for disability support, and cuts the planned increase in social assistance to below the rate of inflation. In Toronto, where housing is at a premium and shelters are bursting at the seams, these changes threaten to worsen an already disastrous situation. On the day of their announcement, Toronto set a new cold weather record with the coldest temperatures ever recorded on that date, sending hundreds of individuals to over-capacity shelters.
Seeing patients die from cold exposure doesn’t surprise us anymore. As a doctor and trainee in Toronto’s downtown core, we frequently witness the deadly impact of precarious housing. We know that homelessness is bad for health and the winter months can be particularly dangerous, yet we continue to see its devastating effects. Between January 1 and March 31, 2018, Toronto Public Health reported on average 1.8 deaths per week among people experiencing homelessness. The average age among the deceased was only 50 years. As medical professionals, we frequently have no choice but to discharge patients from our emergency departments back to the street, largely because of the lack of shelter beds.
In January 2018, Health Providers Against Poverty (HPAP) released an investigative report exposing the appalling conditions within Toronto shelter spaces. The group visited 10 centres, which were run either by non-profit organizations or by the City of Toronto itself. Not a single one met Toronto’s official shelter standards, which include modest necessities such as access to a shower, secure storage for belongings, a blanket, and sufficient space to prevent the spread of disease. This is a poor reflection on our city’s ability to meet the needs of its people.
The report called for 1,500 new shelter beds to meet the ongoing need, a 20 percent increase from the current number. On November 9 of this year, the City of Toronto issued a news release announcing plans to improve winter shelter services, including the addition of three new 24-hour respite centres in large tent-like structures and the addition of 102 permanent shelter beds. Yet this only represents a 1.5 percent increase and falls well short of the recommended target.
Stop-gap measures may be touted as a success, but without a parallel increase in permanent shelter spaces, the new 24-hour respite centres will become inappropriate substitutions for housing. Homeless citizens will be forced to sleep on the floor or in chairs of the respite centres, as they currently do in the waiting rooms of our city’s emergency rooms.
Other cities in Canada, though, seem to be getting things right. The federal Advisory Committee on Homelessness chaired by Toronto MP Adam Vaughan, reported that a number of cities in Quebec and Alberta have witnessed a drop in the demand on their shelter systems largely because they’ve made it a priority to expedite access to affordable housing. Quebec’s strategy to prevent homelessness has included access to a strong social safety net (affordable housing, income and access to services), and transition supports after discharge from institutions such as hospitals and jails.
Research suggests that the most effective and cost-efficient solution to homelessness is to provide subsidized and affordable housing for those who need it. Unfortunately, as housing prices continue to rise, Toronto is not even close to achieving its supposed goal of providing affordable options to its most vulnerable citizens.
The federal government’s $40-billion National Housing Strategy, released in 2016, is an optimistic step in the right direction. It includes an anti-homelessness program to be launched in April 2019, which boldly aims to cut chronic homelessness by 50 percent by 2026. The details of the program, though, are not yet known.
We seem to be at a critical moment with respect to homelessness, with the highest numbers of people in need in Toronto to date, but with the issue also having a prominent place in public consciousness and discussion. Interested citizens and organizations can contribute to an ongoing online consultation for the Housing Supply Action Plan, a provincial initiative that has been created to tackle the housing crisis. The survey closes January 25, 2019, so now is the time to demand a change in how we house our most vulnerable citizens.
Together, all three levels of government must collaborate on long-term housing solutions through strategies such as the development of new social rent-geared-to-income housing, rent control, subsidies for social housing and improved social assistance. We need to hold our governments accountable for providing safe and adequate shelters for the people of Toronto and work toward a future where freezing to death on the sidewalk is no longer commonplace.
The comments section is closed.
I see and understand the winter problems and deaths that come every year, but I’m designing a device that can change that. A device that every one can use safely even in their homemade shelters and tents
No surprise under Trudeau
I’ve heard homeless shelters in Toronto receive over one hundred dollars a night, for every bed thay fill…
Can or dose anyone know how one could confirm this?
Government needs to step up and take action against this.too many on the streets in ontario. Sad when people are dying because they have no where to go. Time to look at what the cause of it is and fix it.Government needs to look out for the canadian people first, help your own people.
the shelters are hellholes that are kept afloat by the poverty pimps.people would rather be outside even if dangerous.
I agree. Shiftwork jobs for some in the shelters; 9-5 jobs writing grant applications for others, and 20-35-40 hrs per week without any supervision if you’re “outreach” workers spending your paid time “liising with street-dwellers. It’s all about jobs for a few. All get to go home to their houses/apts., employees being highly-prized by landlords (they can be sued/evicted more easily than an unemployed person who might be tempted to defend their homes in court, has the time to do so, and thus costs the landlords more $.) Paid workers don’t have the time free for LTB Hearings, and can get replacement homes more easily (they’re desired tenants), and so the housing workers simply can’t relate to those of us terrorized by the cheaper “informal” evictions.
I feel safer on the street’s of Toronto at four o’clock in the morning, then I would being in a homeless shelter at four in the afternoon!
“Together, all three levels of government must collaborate on long-term housing solutions through strategies such as the development of new social rent-geared-to-income housing, rent control, subsidies for social housing and improved social assistance.”
Ok, how? Wheres the analysis? Shoddy article.
Madeline and Conor, what evidence do you have for your first sentence? It suggests freezing deaths and I’m just not aware this is happening. Cathy Crowe, Street Nurse
As Ms. Crowe is well-known for her career devoted to working with those living in the streets, I’m surprised that, apparently, she didn’t read the published statistics – by the City itself – linked to within the article. Instead, she restricted her comment to 1) criticizing the first sentence’s lack of proof, which is always introductory of a topic to be proved/supported within the rest of the article; and 2) denying the phenomenon of people freezing to death on the streets because she is admittedly “not aware this is happening”. (Sorry, this lack of awareness is hard to believe; even this layperson reads the papers, thesis, scholarly reports, etc. All of them are wrong?) And since she includes so little data herself in her attempt to debunk the article, I have to wonder, “why?”. More specifically: why bother to reply at all if your limited two sentences serve only to cast doubt on the other writers’ work?
I’ve been homeless myself, so I’m not quite ignorant, and I welcome any discussions regardless of the rigour of the scholarship or quality of the article. Even the illiterate and high school dropouts are taxpayers, voters and influencers; everyone needs to know people in Toronto and across the province are dying from failed attempts to stay warm in our harsh environments. I’m also aware that most readers do believe published stats – but if one wishes to (perhaps rightfully) challenge the stats, as a layperson or even from an authoritative position, more is needed.
For me, I’d rather die than enter another “shelter” due to the guards’ lies, thefts other behaviours, yet even trying to sleep outside means that I’m likely to be found & assaulted because I can’t keep quiet & hidden (I started snoring recently). I also understand the staff “mean well”, don’t have enough resources or training, “start to emulate the behaviours of the inmates”, etc., etc. The excuses are immaterial.
What is happening now is what matters: this province and this country has a precarious housing crisis, and the social function of the guard industry’s workers appears to be to offer us this choice: either accept the slumlords’ demands, accept the guards’ demands, or go ahead and try to live outside. If you die, tough luck; it’s not because of the system but your own individual choice. Not our fault; the person who was homeless had choices and didn’t have to be outside, and we “experts” in the field have the most authority to debunk/mislead or otherwise judge with the least amount of effort beyond what we’re paid to do. If we choose to do 50 or 51% or our jobs, that’s between us and those who employ us.
Nor are the streets so terrible as to be deadly themselves. I have fond memories of prostitutes, substance users, etc. protecting me as I walked home after work in my 20s, offering advice as to cars and men to avoid, I could approach them when I was searching for a sick cat, and a favourite shelter roomie liked her heroin. I submit that it’s often employed, privileged healthcare and social service workers (backed up by cops and security) that hurt us the most with their judgmental stereotyping, driving us away from safe spots but refuse to even admit their own actions – or the plain and obvious.