Every city has its hospital, its fire station, town hall and, these days, at least one shelter. Shelters, like food banks decades earlier, were created as a band-aid solution, a quick fix to an emergency situation. Now food banks are a permanent part of the urban landscape, with one in ten Torontonians relying on them to make ends meet. Could shelters be heading the same way?
In May 2023, Toronto city council declared homelessness an emergency with over 10,000 “actively homeless” people waiting for shelter that spring. The declaration came with over $707.9 million in spending on measures to alleviate homelessness, including shelters. Now, the number of people unhoused has risen to an estimated 15,400, according to city data. And while critics say the spending is necessary, without permanent housing for shelter users to move into, the shelter system is increasingly backlogged.
For Met Radio, Mia Johnson finds out what’s slowing those transitions from shelters into affordable housing down, why the system is so overloaded and whether shelter spending is just counterproductive.