At one Toronto refugee shelter, a family with four kids was asked to give up one of their two rooms for a newly arrived family so both could have a roof over their heads.
At another, in the west end, a family of three stored their luggage in the staff office and spent the night in what’s supposed to be the TV room for other residents.
The recent shelter crunch has even prompted the Romero House, which has four locations in Toronto, to launch a community host program to ask neighbours, friends and supporters to open their homes to accommodate the overflow until a shelter bed is available for those knocking on its doors.
Since the beginning of the fall, the peak season for refugee arrivals, Toronto’s already strained refugee shelter system has been dealing with what some operators call an unprecedented bed shortage. Some operators are even referring callers to shelters in Hamilton.
The system is expected to be further strained with more asylum seekers anticipated to arrive via the United States after the Trump administration’s recent executive order to limit immigration and refugees that is widely viewed by the immigrant communities there as xenophobic.
Over the last few months, both Manitoba and Quebec have reported a spike in migrants smuggling through the U.S. border for asylum in Canada.
“We have had an overcrowded system because of the lack of affordable housing in the city and people are staying in shelters longer,” said Hannah Deloughery, a housing co-ordinator at Romero House, which can accommodate as many as 40 residents at its locations. “But we have never seen the lack of space like what we are seeing now.”
According to the city, on average more than 4,150 homeless people, including refugees, stay in Toronto emergency shelters each night. Although the system — divided into co-ed, men’s, women’s, youth and family shelters — is currently at 95 per cent capacity, occupancy for family shelters is at the seams. Toronto has 695 funded shelter beds for families and another 520 at motels.
While the number of homeless contacting the city for referrals to available shelter beds rose by 13.2 per cent last year to 12,843, Patricia Anderson, a manager of the city’s shelter support and housing administration, said calls from individual refugees and families looking for shelters almost tripled to 928.
“The family sector is especially tight. The city uses motel beds to accommodate families during high-demand periods. The city made 150 additional beds available before Christmas, bringing to 520 the number of funded motel beds. These are used as they are available,” she said. “We are working on making more motel beds available.”
The Immigration and Refugee Board said it saw the number of inland refugee claimants (those who arrived in Canada and sought asylum) increase to 16,914 in 2015, up from 10,751 in 2013 — and half of them settled in Greater Toronto.
While the final tally for 2016 isn’t available yet, just nine months into the year, the number had already reached the total of the previous year.
Francisco Rico-Martinez of the FCJ Refugee Centre, which shelters 30 women and children at four locations, said the current shelter crisis is compounded by the changes the former Conservative federal government made to expedite the processing of asylum claims under strict timelines.
“Refugee claimants now know they can get a hearing and a decision within months. If the decision is negative, they have to leave Canada quickly. So, instead of renting a place, they stay longer in shelters,” said Rico-Martinez, whose centre had families staying in its staff meeting room on sofa-beds through December and earlier this month.
“Shelters run by the city don’t ask for legal status and identification because Toronto is a sanctuary city that doesn’t ask for status. You have undocumented clients coming to Toronto for shelters because they have nowhere to go in Peel or York regions.”
While the City of Hamilton is also a sanctuary city for undocumented migrants and accepts claimants in its shelter system, Rico-Martinez said families and agencies cannot afford the transportation to send the clients there.
To manage the overflow, Romero House has asked its neighbours, supporters and former clients to provide free temporary accommodation, though Deloughery said the real solution lies in additional investment in the shelter system and developing more affordable housing.
Kathy Mansfield, a clinical nursing educator, and her husband, Tim Stephenson, an IT manager, are among those who have opened their home to help.
“The high cost of rent is a big challenge in the city but it is where the jobs are. Offering a shelter is a small gift but it’s huge for someone who has lost their home, jobs and family,” said Mansfield, who is currently housing Marino Miguela Botuli, an asylum seeker fleeing political persecution in the Congo. “It allows them to proceed and settle.”
Another community host, Caroline Newton, said she had no hesitation when contacted by Romero House staff to offer her spare bedroom to a refugee from Ethiopia and will do it again.
“I always pay attention to refugee issues, but I didn’t realize how bad the shelter crunch was,” said Newton, a communications professional. “I do have a spare bedroom and I have faith in the goodness of people.”
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