An emergency without city action? Not good enough.

Yesterday City Council approved HousingTO, a ten-year plan to build 40,000 units of housing. While advocates are pleased a housing rights lens is included in the plan, others remain alarmed at the inadequacy of city action on the homelessness emergency, especially as the completion of a single housing build can take 3-10 years.

As Francine Kopun in the Toronto STAR reports:

Advocates have been calling on council to declare a state of emergency over the housing situation, in a city where an estimated 10,000 people sleep in the open and in shelters at night. A successful motion by Coun. Ana Bailao (Ward 9 Davenport) stopped short of that, while recognizing that homelessness in Toronto "is an ongoing critical and emergency issue requiring the provincial and federal governments to commit on an expedited basis to build on the initiatives the city has taken to date.” (December 18, 2019)

Of note, the motion does nothing to address the following recommendations of the Shelter and Housing Justice Network:

• Make a formal statement declaring that homelessness and the social housing situation are an emergency necessitating immediate action.
• Invite the Red Cross to assist with emergency respite and warming centre operations, as they did in the winter of 2017-2018.
• Move the only Warming Centre that currently operates in a hallway at Metro Hall, to a more accessible and spacious site.
• Create four to six additional Warming Centres throughout Toronto that would allow people to easily access them.
• Improve the safety and health outcomes in all Respite Centres that have 100 or more people staying in them by reducing capacity by one third.
• Fast track a 4th Sprung Structure.
• Create a strategy for the creation of 2,000 permanent shelter beds.
• Implement the recommendations of the Faulkner Inquest, including the distribution of survival equipment and supplies (sleeping bags, fire retardant blankets, safe heat sources) to people who are living outside. Tents must be added to this list. Fund additional outreach teams to distribute these items.
• Impose a moratorium on evictions of people living in all public spaces, including parks, ravines, and encampments.
• Impose a moratorium on the removal of all encampments.
• Expropriate buildings, left unused and vacant by owners, for immediate conversion to RGI social housing such as single room dwellings or transitional housing.
• Extend the timeframe of all emergency shelters and Respite Centres so they operate year-round.
• Create one hundred beds to replace those lost when the Out of the Cold program shuts down in April.