Examining the ambiguous keepers of the hotel shelter list
The hotel shelter program is a highlight of the City’s homelessness solution strategy, galvanized by the effects of the pandemic. In a December press release last year, the City boasted that it created 2,300 new temporary shelter and hotel spaces for physical distancing, and their Streets to Homes team, part of the Shelter, Support, and Housing Administration, or SSHA, helped move more than 1,100 encampment dwellers inside.
So, who is the keeper of the hotel shelter list? And how do referrals get through and who manages this intake?
By calling the municipal, 24-hour non-emergency line, 311, I spoke with an SSHA staff member in the Streets to Homes team who told me that the criteria for the hotels were that the person showed “Priority” and “Requirement” needs. Priority means they live in one of the four main encampments in the city: Moss Park, Alexandra Park, Trinity Bellwoods, or Lamport Stadium. Requirement needs
Tiny shelter builder Khaleel Seivwright asks Toronto to drop legal action against him
Stay in the loop Sign up for our free email newsletter. Unsubscribe anytime or contact us for details. The City of Toronto has a housing crisis. This pandemic has made it worse, Seivwright starts off, facing the camera directly. With winter approaching, I knew that without shelter people would die, as they do in Toronto every year. I started building tiny shelters so that some of the most vulnerable could have somewhere warm to go. This is only a distraction. The problem is not the tiny shelters, the problem is that Toronto s most vulnerable people are falling through the cracks.