Less than a week into sobriety, with her broken fingers and bruised back starting to mend, Lynda is grateful she has people to talk to and a roof over her head.
Lynda is an alcoholic and went cold turkey just after she arrived at a newly opened women’s shelter in Scarborough. She couldn’t eat for days and her hands shook so badly she couldn’t hold a glass of water.
The plastic chip that documents her first 24 hours of sobriety is something she is thankful for. So is the numbness that masks the pain in her three fractured and crushed fingers on her left hand and the kindness of staff.
“If you had seen me the first day I was here I wouldn’t have been able to hold that up,” she said showing the chip to the Star. “If this place wasn’t here I don’t know where I would be right now. I would probably still be drinking.”
A police officer who responded to the domestic violence call drove her from the hospital to the shelter in the middle of the night.
The man she accuses of bruising her from head to toe was arrested but has since been released. Lynda, who asked that her full name be withheld, said he was on probation for assaulting her.
The 60-bed Scarborough shelter is one of two new facilities the Star recently toured. The second houses 30 beds for men on Bloor St. W.
The women’s shelter filled in a week and the men’s in three days. On Wednesday, men’s shelters were 96 per cent full and women’s at 94 per cent, according to city data. The entire system has about 4,100 beds and 520 spots in hotels.
Any new beds, advocates for the homeless say, are long overdue and fall short of what is urgently needed. They are a life raft for men, women, families and youth who have lost or can’t afford a place to live. But in an increasingly unaffordable city, they say, the beds are being used less as an emergency resource and more as temporary housing by people who have nowhere else to go, or the supports to get there.
In Toronto in 2016, a one-bedroom apartment rented for $1,130 a month, and the waitlist for Toronto Community Housing has topped 180,000, and is in massive need of repairs.
Mayor John Tory has pressed Ottawa and the province to each kick in a third of the $2.6 billion repair bill. No firm commitments have materialized, though Tory has expressed cautious optimism that progress is being made.
The federal government is crafting a National Housing Strategy, in response to what is recognized as a countrywide crisis, with the release timed to the upcoming budget.
At the Scarborough shelter, Tory spoke one-on-one with Lynda and 19 other women in the dining hall and then with the Star.
The mayor said it is right for people to hold his office to account, but said they’re making progress in efforts to get people off the street, including funding for more beds, and the city’s shelter and housing staff have made exemplary efforts to date.
“I am not satisfied that we have done everything that is possible to do, but I am certainly satisfied that we have made huge efforts to do more,” he said.
In 2015, council directed the city’s real estate division to help shelter and housing staff find 15 temporary and permanent shelter sites needed to ease the pressure in the shelter system through 2020. This followed a 2013 directive by council to get shelter capacity down to 90 per cent.
Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, who moved the 2013 motion, said emergency shelters are at best a Band-Aid solution.
“When that becomes their permanent address that is a system fail. They have given up hope on affordable housing and are living in shelters.”
She said city staff have made huge efforts to find new facilities, but have been hampered by the cost of real estate and community push back.
Wong-Tam wants legislation that compels developers to build affordable housing units in new buildings, or requires emergency shelters in each ward so if people lose their home they also don’t face being displaced.
She said the city also has the tools available to ease the pressure, including boosting property taxes or a vehicle registration tax.
The city’s budget will get hammered out at council, starting Wednesday, and part of the discussions will include a proposed cut to shelter and housing staffing levels, or the loss of 12 positions through attrition.
Councillor Pam McConnell said she was combing through and discussing details of the cuts with the Mayor and the city’s budget chief and general manager this week to ensure whatever comes to council wouldn’t mean less service for people in need.
“I do not think in this time of housing crisis, with people living on the street, that it is any time at all to erode our safety net for people living in shelters.”
Meanwhile, advocates have been calling on the city to act and last month 31 agencies involved in advocacy and front-line work urged Tory to open the military armouries, as has been done in the past, or a similarly large building for emergency shelter. In the last two years, they noted, 80 people have died as a result of homelessness, citing numbers from a memorial at the Church of the Holy Trinity.
City staff determined the armouries are not places where people could be housed in a safe, hygienic and dignified way. Tory, in an open letter, supported that decision and said city staff continue to work with all levels of government and the non-profit sector to try to find additional spaces.
He also detailed the city’s current Winter Readiness Plan, which includes a $2 million boost to get shelters online quickly, 150 hotel beds for families and money for the Out of the Cold program, a volunteer-led initiative where people sleep on mats. The program can accommodate 700 people at different locations and spread over the week. The city will also keep the three drop-in centres open until March and has boosted funding to programs that help shelter clients rent apartments.
Tory wrote he was confident the federal government will “commit substantial funding to housing” in the spring budget and was hopeful Premier Kathleen Wynne’s acknowledgment that the “province has to be a partner going forward” will mean matching dollars.
The new Bloor St. W. men’s shelter is managed by the Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre and is next to the agency’s LOFT Kitchen, a social enterprise catering company staffed primarily by at-risk youth who provide all the meals for the shelter, as well as for a second shelter on Lansdowne Ave.
Greg Rogers, development officer for the centre, said four of the men sleeping at Bloor St. have jobs, but “just can’t afford to rent.” One, said Rogers, is saving up to get a place and “just needs a hand,” but men who rely on social support or disability payments have fewer prospects.
To free up space in the men’s system, the city also opened a 36-bed shelter for male refugees.
The Scarborough shelter was launched using a six-month contract. It was awarded to the Homes First Society because they had the experience to get it up and running quickly, said Gordon Tanner, project director for the city’s Shelter, Support and Housing Administration division.
On Monday, a 96-bed temporary shelter for families opened on Gerrard St. and a 60-bed men’s shelter in Leslieville is set to open by the end of the year.
The George Street Revitalization project, or the razing and replacement of Seaton House with mixed housing for men, is expected to be done in 2021, though funding has not been secured.
Meanwhile, those within the system struggle to plan their futures.
Lynda fell behind on rent and doesn’t know if she will be evicted. “When you are using, that is what you use, if you wake up with anxiety about your bills or family you just drink it or drug it away. You push it on the back burner,” she said.
Patricia Mueller, chief executive officer of Homes First, said a key role of shelter staff is helping people like Lynda with housing.
Homes First runs three more shelters, with beds for 150 people and 13 properties housing 600 people, with a range of physical, mental and addiction issues.
The waitlist for that permanent housing has topped 2,000.
“Not only do we need more housing, in particular for our clientele, we need deeply affordable housing,” said Mueller. In the short term, they also take donations of hygiene products at the Scarborough shelter and would welcome volunteers who could provide manicures, or hairstyling.
For now, Lynda plans to stay put. She has been helping out, picking up second-hand clothing for a woman with mobility issues and organizing food donations.
“This is my safety zone right now,” she said. “I can make myself well right now and I am getting stronger by the day.”
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