It was billed as an advance tour of the latest 24-hour respite care shelter to open in Toronto.
Scheduled to open Thursday night in the Queen Elizabeth Building at Exhibition Place, it looked awfully much to me like a warehouse for 200 poor souls — a perfect example of what is known as three hots (hot meals, plus snacks) and a cot.
Under sharp fluorescent lighting, the cots were lined up on top of each other like an army dorm — with blue tape outlining men’s cots and pink for women’s. The cots are barely high enough to store the most minimal of worldly possessions underneath.
There is an additional storage room at one end of the room but it doesn’t look to be secure.
There will, however, be at least five security guards and between five and seven support workers on at all times, not that I expect they will be watching client possessions.
Since the shelter allows pets, there were 20 crates lined up against the side of the room containing nothing more than a hard looking black tray, no little blanket, nothing. (I suppose that’s better than the sidewalk).
SHARPS containers to deposit needles are contained in key locations throughout — clearly indicating that taking one’s drugs in the respite shelter is fine by City Hall.
The “dining area” — where catered meals will be served — consisted of a series of portable tables set up at one end of the large room.
This cramped warehouse facility will be provided at a cost of $105 per client per night by Homes First.
“This is not what we’d like to be doing,” said Patricia Mueller, CEO of Homes First, which also runs the respite centre at 354 George St.
“We’d rather be running more housing.”
Mueller says the people who have turned up at their other shelters primarily have addiction or mental health issues — but some have just genuinely lost their housing.
She said the problem is that there has been a “perfect storm” — many contributing factors causing homelessness in the city.
The influx of refugees is part of the issue, she adds, but there’s people losing their housing because of rising rents, addictions, the opioid crisis or hoarding issues or because landlords are converting units into Airbnbs.
“They’re so many things causing this and right now we want to make sure no one dies on the streets,” she said, noting when asked that cots are “within city standards” for how apart they should be.
“It’s definitely within health standards … it’s not how I’d like people to live,” Mueller admitted. “I want people to get housed.”
She said they will have a worker on hand to try to get people into permanent housing but there’s a relative dearth of “deeply affordable” and “supportive” housing units.
I asked her about the 1,200 rent-geared-to-income units at Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) currently sitting vacant — most of them bachelors and one-bedrooms.
“I would be happy to take those units on, clean them and get them repaired,” she said.
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