Activists, councillors eye improvements to ‘inhumane’ cooling centre program

Currently, the temperature must hit the 31 C and stay there for three days before the city opens cooling centres.

Thestar.com
July 28, 2016

Members of city hall and poverty activists are banding together to re-evaluate Toronto’s system of opening cooling centres for people without air conditioning, a system critics call restrictive and unfair to the city’s homeless population.

The news comes from the office of Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, whose staff told the Star on Tuesday that the councillor is working with the mayor’s office, Councillor Joe Cressy and Board of Health chair Councillor Joe Mihevc to help open cooling centres more quickly and more often.

“Councillor Wong-Tam is in full support of opening the cooling centres as soon as a heat alert is declared,” an email from the her office reads.

“Many residents do not have air conditioning or sufficient insulation to keep their apartments and homes at a comfortable temperature. Particularly for people with respiratory problems and other vulnerable groups, being able to access cooling centres in the day and the evening is essential during extreme heat.”

Mayor John Tory’s office confirmed they are working with the group at Wong-Tam’s request.

Mihevc told the Star the group is “working very hard” at improving the city’s cooling centres, including opening them before an extreme heat warning is issued and providing better transportation for those who need it.

As Cathy Crowe - a longtime poverty activist and registered nurse - sees it, what needs to happen is the hot-weather version of the city changing its rules on warming centres last winter after a number of homeless people froze to death.

“It’s just inhumane. Given the shortage of shelter beds in this city and the facilities being remarkably basic,” Crowe said, noting the growing need for affordable housing in Toronto. “I’m just shocked. I’m shocked because there should be more organizations making noise about this.”

Currently, it takes more than high temperatures for the city to open the centres. The temperature must hit the official “extreme” heat of 31 C and stay there for three days, thus prompting an extended heat warning. That’s all set out by the province’s Harmonized Heat Warning plan.

But the extended heat warning requirement has been the ire of poverty activists for years, many of whom see the long wait time as being a burden on Toronto’s most at-risk populations.

Since 2012, Toronto’s centres have been opened more than 20 times, most of those in the month of July and close to half in 2012.

Greg Cook, an outreach co-ordinator at Sanctuary - a downtown drop-in program near Yonge and Bloor Sts. - said that over the last few years gentrification and rising housing prices downtown have forced many homeless away from the core. Cook said that many who need to access Sanctuary’s and other agencies’ services must now walk long distances to get downtown. That means more exposure to the sun and a higher chance of dehydration and sun stroke. It’s just one of the reasons, he says, that cooling centres are a necessity now more than ever.

“Generally, I think it is fair to say that people do think of the winter as being the harshest climate for homeless folks, or folks with precarious housing. But heat can be just as bad . . . Folks believe they can stay outside for longer than they actually can.”

For 54-year-old Bill Harvey, who got a bed at Lucas House just two years ago after decades of living on the street, homelessness in the summer is a constant game of moving from one cool spot to the next, avoiding sunlight and saving energy any way you can.

Harvey says many homeless people find themselves hiding out in places like the Toronto Reference Library. It’s not ideal - most have to work to not draw attention to themselves - but without better access to cooling centres, Harvey says there’s not much of a choice than to take what little free public spaces have to offer.

“It seems so simple, but it’s not,” Harvey said, stressing the difficulty of finding places to rest while homeless.

“If you have a homeless guy hanging around (inside a mall), how long do you think they’d let him stay before security came? I can tell you right now: we wouldn’t even be able to finish this conversation.”