Every night, dozens of homeless people are told there are no shelter beds available for them and the situation appears to be getting worse, newly released city data shows.
The data from the city’s Shelter and Supportive Housing Administration (SSHA) was first published last month.
It reveals that over the past year and a half an average of 40 people a night have been denied shelter after calling central intake for a bed.
But alarmingly, the trend appears to have worsened so far in 2022.
Monthly data shows that for the first six months of the year, an average of 63 people have been turned away each night amid a steady increase in the overall occupancy of the shelter system. It’s a situation homeless advocates say is consistent with what they’re seeing on the ground.
Shelter spaces, they say, are getting harder to find, leaving many people with little choice but to sleep rough.
“More and more I realize that you call and then you are on hold even to speak to a human being for a long time. Then you call someone and they tell you to call back in an hour, there are no spaces available for men, or women, or a trans person, or whatever is requested. And several people I work with don’t have phones, they’re poor,” Greg Cook, who is a social worker with Toronto’s Sanctuary Ministries, told CP24.com. “What that means is that when the walk-in service closes at 9 p.m. Do you want a sleeping bag? as the best option, which is very, very sad.”
Cook said that when beds are available, staff at the central entrance can usually reserve one for up to two hours, at which point they can provide people seeking shelter for the night with a taxi voucher or transit token to take them. to the shelter.
But he said it’s getting harder to find available beds, as the city’s homeless crisis worsens.
He said the data provided doesn’t even capture the full extent of the problem and there’s no way of knowing how many people “don’t even bother to try.”
The situation worries him ahead of winter, when cooler overnight temperatures and the planned closure of several temporary hotel shelters could further exacerbate the problem.
“Especially when the weather is severe, it is very, very difficult. I’ve been on outreach shifts where we’re handing out Tim’s cards because at least someone might have a few hours inside and during the pandemic that wasn’t even an option,” he said. “I go home at night to a warm bed knowing that the people I just spoke to are outside shivering. This is why we deliver sleeping bags as an organization every year. It’s because we want people to stay alive and sadly many are dying.”
THE CITY COUNCIL HAD REQUESTED THAT THE DATA BE MADE PUBLIC
The release of the data on shelter referrals comes about three months after the council requested that it be made public.
Gord Tanner, who is the interim general manager of SSHA, was not available for an interview to discuss the data.
However, a city spokesman said the figures “reflect that the emergency shelter system continues to face significant demand.”
“Over the last five years, the city has continually added and maintained new capacity in the shelter system. The shelter system now accommodates nearly 2,000 more people per night than it did in April 2021 and the number of beds currently available for homeless singles or couples is at its highest point in five years. However, the homeless sector faces significant challenges, in Toronto and other major North American cities,” wrote Erin Whitton. “The stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid crisis, and the critical lack of affordable and supportive housing are contributing to many people facing significant hardship, placing them in need of emergency shelter and support. Additionally, the lifting of border restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in refugee families seeking emergency shelter.”
Toronto’s hostel system is typically operating at 98 percent capacity.
But advocates for the homeless have long maintained that those numbers wrongly suggest that beds are available when that often isn’t the case.
The data seems to support that.
For example, in June there was an average of 553 calls per night to the central outlet. On average, about 30 of those calls resulted in people being referred to a shelter space.
But almost 100 people each night were “unmatched”, meaning the staff couldn’t find a suitable bed for them.
In those cases, the city says caseworkers are trained to “encourage the person to call back later” if a space becomes available and to share information about other nearby services available, such as walk-in programs. where they could wait. for referral to a shelter bed.
“What’s helpful with this data is that at least they can’t get away with not telling the truth. Their own data shows that when people try to find shelter beds, they can’t. So even if the shelter says it’s 97 percent full, it doesn’t mean there’s a bed available,” Cook told CP24.com. “I think it’s useful (the data) but frankly, having tried to drive change, I’m not that hopeful (that it will change anything). I hope that at least they (the city) stop like the camp evictions because people don’t have a place to go. People are just trying to survive.”
The city says the data will be updated monthly going forward.