Influx of refugees triggers city's emergency plan on shelter beds
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The city has activated a contingency plan to open up at least 800 more shelter beds to accommodate growing numbers of asylum seekers from the U.S., Toronto’s office of emergency management said Wednesday.
Beginning Thursday, the city will begin temporarily housing refugee claimants in 400 beds at Centennial College’s residence and conference centre in Scarborough. As of June 1, 400 additional beds at Humber College’s Etobicoke campus will also be made available.
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The 800 beds will only be open until early August and comes at a cost of $6.3 million.
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“We have 2,700 refugees in our shelter system, we’ve exhausted our capacity and our resources,” said Paul Raftis, general manager of shelter, support and housing administration at a press conference.
“Over the last month, we’ve seen on average, 10 people a day come in to the shelter system, so over 350 new people in last month and we expect that to continue going forward. Our concern is: if it continues at that rate, or speeds up, there will be nowhere to put individuals and they will end up on the street.”
Refugee claimants now make up 41% of Toronto’s shelter population, according to Tuesday’s editorial from the Toronto Star, up from 11.2% in 2016.
At the current rate of arrivals, the city projects refugee claimants will represent more than 53.6% of Toronto’s shelter population by November.
Raftis said they anticipate the emergency beds will be full within 60 to 70 days.
“We do know that Quebec did announce that they did anticipate up to 400 people crossing every day with warm weather,” he said.
“We’ve exhausted our human resources.”
There are also refugee claimants coming from Manitoba as well, Raftis added.
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The city anticipates an incurred cost of $64.5 million by the end of the year in direct costs related to providing motel housing to refugee claimants, not including the cost of these 800 beds.
The province is paying up to $3 million in Red Cross staff as part of total operating cost of these emergency shelter beds. The city is urging the provincial and federal governments to lend them a hand with a “regional strategy,” including more funding and placing refugees to other locations outside of Toronto’s shelter system.
“Toronto has a long history of welcoming refugees but the city can no longer absorb the cost and impact of the increasing numbers of refugee claimants coming into the country,” said Mayor John Tory in a statement.
“We have triggered our emergency protocol to help these families in their time of need, with some support from the Government of Ontario, but require the federal government to take immediate steps to permanently relieve this unprecedented pressure on the city’s shelter system.”
After early August, when students return to their dorms at these colleges, then the city will look at using its community centres, to relocate refugee claimants in Toronto and accommodate new arrivals.
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