A Thousand More Beds

The homeless shelter system in Canada’s largest city is in crisis. Toronto’s sky-high rental market,government cuts to social housing and assistance benefits, and a city council that voted against immediate respite during a recent cold snap are jeopardizing the lives of homeless people.

But anti-poverty and housing activists are fighting the systemic abandonment of homeless people, andthey’re winning important gains.

- Yogi Acharya and John Clarke

In February of 2017, Pierre Gregoire tried to get into a downtown warming centre that would offer him a mat on the floor, but it was packed to capacity. He was offered a spot on the waiting list. Shortly after leaving the warming centre, he died of a suspected fentanyl overdose in the bathroom of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Gregoire, a 28-year-old Indigenous man living on the streets of Toronto, was one of 94 homeless people – most of whom were younger than 50 – who died in Toronto in 2017.

Poor and homeless people in Toronto are in the midst of a deadly and intensifying crisis. Emergency shelters in the country’s largest city have been overwhelmed for years, forcing drop-in centres and volunteer-run overnight programs to operate as de facto shelters to shoulder the overflow. Even so, there isn’t space for everyone and many are left with nowhere to go.

For years, homeless people, front-line workers, and advocates have been sounding the alarm about the rise in homelessness and the shortage of shelter beds. Among their most urgent demands have been the calls to add at least 1,000 new permanent beds in order to lower occupancy levels, and to open the two federal armouries as an interim measure to provide immediate respite. These two armouries were used four times between 1996 and 2004 and have the capacity to provide shelter for up to 300 people. They have showers, adequate washrooms, and cots. In the past, the armouries have taken pressure off a shelter system straining to meet existing needs.