Councillors hope to change warming centre policies to provide more spaces and access

A group of Toronto councillors say people experiencing homelessness need more access to the City’s warming centres in the winter months, arguing that the current criteria for opening the centres is too strict and puts lives in danger.

Councillors Ausma Malik, Alejandra Bravo and Gord Perks will be requesting a review of the City’s policies around extreme cold weather alerts and warming centres at this month’s Board of Health meeting.

All three sit on the Board of Health and argue that weather risks stretch beyond extreme cold.

“The city’s extreme cold weather alert policy actually only triggers the opening of warming centres when the temperature dips below -15C,” Malik said.

“And this is actually forcing people to put their safety, their lives, and their health at risk because studies are showing that 72 per cent of hypothermia cases amongst people who are experiencing homelessness actually occur when the temperature is warmer than -15C.”

The City does occasionally open the centres in situations where it hasn’t reached that low temperature, but some advocates argue it’s still not enough. Lorraine Lam, from the Shelter and Housing Justice Network, is one of them.

Lam believes they should be open around the clock in the colder months.

“It shouldn’t be such a fight,” she said. “Warming centers really just need to be open 24/7, especially in the wintertime, because people need to know that they’re open.”

“People need to be able to plan for their safety and for their warmth. And so, the city really needs to make a change in that.”

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Coun. Bravo points out that those experiencing homelessness are at risk even when the weather doesn’t dip to extreme lows.

“An extreme weather event isn’t the only threat to people’s health,” she stressed. “People are losing toes. People are frost bitten, people are dying on the street.”

Bravo also wants to see more transparency and better communication surrounding when the centres open.

“I think a really important part of this is to make sure that when a warming center does open that people know it’s going to happen … If it’s hard for us to figure out when, where, and for how long a warming center is going to open, how is a person who is living on the street going to find out?”

As for why the centres aren’t open more often, Bravo says it boils down to money.

“The answer is in the 2015 report that shelter staff produced, which says that yes, we should have warming centres open 24 hours all of January and February when we know it’s going to be coldest.

“And the reason it wasn’t done at that time is funding,” she said.

“So absolutely, we need to make sure that we’re spending every available dollar of the City’s money, pushing for the matching and or even greater contributions from the provincial government who needs to step in. And also the federal government, because homelessness isn’t only the result of municipal government action.”

The Board of Health will be meeting on Jan 16 and hope to have a review of warming centre policies by their next meeting in February. The councillors say they hope to be able to implement changes as soon as possible during the remainder of the winter season.

“We just need warm spaces for people to go and that is why we’re seeing more people ride transit to stay warm,” Lam adds. “We’re seeing people find respite at Union Station or in the malls, or in food courts or coffee shops around the city.”

“The reality is people have nowhere to go.”