People turned away from Toronto shelters hits highest number ever recorded

The average number of people who were turned away from the shelter system daily in June hit its highest level ever recorded as Toronto deals with a surge in unhoused refugees and residents.

Data from the City found 273.5 individuals were unmatched when they called Central Intake looking for a place to stay in June, up 175 per cent from the same time last year, and more than 3,000 per cent from 2021 when just seven people per night were turned away.

The City tells CityNews of those who were unmatched, 45 per cent were refugee claimants.

It also found only 15.2 calls per day resulted in a referral to a space the same month, the lowest the city has recorded.

Calls to Central Intake have also spiked, reaching over 1,000 calls per day on average in May and June.

“The increasing need for shelter services is due to a number of factors, including insufficient affordable housing supply, increased housing costs, a volatile economy with high inflation, wages and income supports that are too low to address the cost of living in Toronto and across Ontario, and an increase of asylum seekers requesting emergency shelter,” said the City of Toronto in a statement.

Outreach worker Lorraine Lam said she’s not surprised by these numbers based on what she’s observed. “It’s pretty devastating.”

The federal government recently announced Toronto will receive nearly $100 million to help fund housing solutions for refugees.

The situation came to a head as a group of more than 200 refugees spent days living on the sidewalk outside a downtown Toronto shelter intake office.

The makeshift camp outside 129 Peter Street had some refugees calling it home for as long as four weeks because of a lack of space at City shelters. The asylum seekers sleeping on the sidewalk are all from African nations.

As of Tuesday, 212 asylum seekers have been referred to an indoor space, but more are arriving every day looking for shelter.

Gafar Kamao Dwen arrived in Canada from Ghana on Friday but has had no luck securing a spot.

“They told us there are a lot of people in there so we can’t get inside,” said Dwen.

The situation has visibly improved at the intake office on Peter St. with less than a dozen people there Tuesday and they have been allowed to sleep inside the office rather than on the street.

Lam tells CityNews this issue is not because of the influx of refugees, it’s because the housing crisis has worsened in Toronto. She tells CityNews while shelter spaces would be welcomed, affordable housing is what’s desperately needed.

“Individuals in all sorts of shelters are stuck in shelters for years and years because there’s nowhere to move on to. Shelters are supposed to be a temporary measure, but we’ve created a system and a reality where people live in shelters for over decades. That’s completely unacceptable,” Lam said.

More than 10,000 people were considered “actively homeless” in Toronto in the last 3 months … almost half of them between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the city’s latest data.