Unhoused people want seat at the table: Toronto advocates

Toronto city councillors must speak directly with unhoused people before making policy decisions on homelessness, advocates at Toronto city hall said Thursday.

That demand was one of many made by advocates at city hall.

Al, an unhoused person who only gave their first name, said a new group formed in the past year to give unhoused people a voice. That group, the Toronto Underhoused and Homeless Union, represents people who either live outside now or have been homeless before. Al is an executive board member of the group and lived in Allan Gardens in a tent.

"We need councillors to talk to the people who are actually affected by these decisions," Al said.

"We are the people for whom these decisions are life and death. Whatever happens in council, every council member and the mayor goes home to a soft bed and a roof over their heads and gets to sleep soundly. And we do not. We get killed or brutalized or spat on or some horrendous act of violence. And even if it doesn't happen, we're kept awake because we're scared," Al added.

"They need to be talking to us, to the people on the ground, to the people who have experienced this and not just to people who think they can speak on our behalf."

Al, along with members of the Shelter and Housing Justice Network, called on council at a news conference to impose a moratorium on encampment evictions, extend leases of shelter hotels, reopen the 24-hour winter respite centres that were closed on Monday and keep them open year round regardless of the weather.

Greg Cook, an outreach worker at Sanctuary Ministries of Toronto, said the network also wants the city to open 500 more 24-hour respite spaces, add an additional 2,000 city-funded rent supplements and increase the Toronto Shelter and Support Services (TSSS) budget to ensure people living outside have survival supplies.

Cook said the city closed the Better Living Centre, a temporary winter respite centre that had 300 spaces, in March.

"The city literally closed the door on better living," he told reporters.

People sleep where they can, outreach worker says

Megan Carver has been an outreach worker for more than 10 years who does case management in the downtown east and works with people who are homeless and have mental health, addiction and criminal justice issues. She said people have no choice but to use their basic survival skills on the streets because the shelters are full and there is a 14-year wait list for one bedroom rent geared to income unit.

"People I work with avoid the dangers of the streets by trying to sleep in staircases, coffee shops, hospital washrooms, ravines and the subway," Carver said.

"The city sends outreach teams and Toronto police. But more often than not, those wellness-checks and encounters result in trespass notices instead of a safe referral to a shelter."

In a news release on Thursday, the network said the city has bused refugees seeking shelter spaces to other cities, integrated bunk beds into overcrowded existing shelters, used TTC buses as respite spaces, and most recently, ended its winter services for people experiencing homelessness. The network called on the city to divest of policing and invest in what it called "life-affirming and life-sustaining community services."

At the news conference, advocates said they were expecting Mayor Olivia Chow and council to have had a better strategy on homelessness by now. 

"There needs to be change," Carver said. "We need housing immediately, we need safe shelter immediately, and we need trained advocates and workers on the front lines to support these individuals."

City staff to present report on encampments in May

Gord Tanner, general manager of TSSS, said in an interview on Thursday the city is winding down some of its winter programs now and it will evaluate to see if it can extend them or keep any of them open.

"We are going to provide as much service as we can within the budget that we have available that has been given to us by city council," he said. "The winter programs were just that. They were to provide additional support during the winter months." 

Tanner added: "The stakeholders in this space are vast and many. We always need to be listening to people and specifically those folks who are experiencing homelessness themselves. And there is room for improvement there always.

"Going forward, I hope we continue to build a bigger table or tent to talk to people about these issues because really it's an all community response, all of government response, that's needed to solve this complex challenge," he said.

At a May 29 meeting of the city's economic and community development committee, city staff are expected to present a report on the city's response to encampments in the light of recommendations from Toronto's ombudsman, he said.

Earlier this week, the city released data showing that the number of tents set up by unhoused people in encampments has more than doubled in Toronto in the past year. According to the city, people are taking shelters in parks that haven't seen encampments before.

City data indicates that the number of people "actively" homeless in Toronto in the last three months is 10,833. The number of people who used the city's shelter system was 9,510 on April 17, while the average number of people unable to secure a shelter bed nightly was 178 in March.

"We are utilizing every bed space we have each night to its full capacity," Tanner said.