Centennial College opens dorms to refugees as part of city contingency plan

Thestar.com
May 24, 2017
Victoria Gibson

A Centennial College residence was opening its doors to summer occupants Thursday -- but the new arrivals weren’t students.

Rather, the school is housing refugee claimants in their dormitories, as part of the city’s plan to cope with an influx of refugees arriving in Toronto.

Multiple floors and around 400 beds in the crisp, bright Centennial Place residence have been designated by the city to temporarily house refugees -- 100 or so families -- under a contingency plan for emergency social services, which will also see rooms filled at Humber College in Etobicoke.

“It is likely that we will be seeing families,” Stephanie Etkin, a manager with Red Cross disaster management, told the Star in the hours before the newest residents arrived.

The suite-style Centennial dorms were an amenable layout to housing families together, she said. “We are anticipating that we will be seeing children and some babies and some big families, but we’re anticipating and ready for any sort of makeup.”

The plan is a response to “unprecedented events and emergency situations,” according to the city. Toronto’s shelter system has reached its capacity to accommodate new refugee arrivals, according to a press release Wednesday.

Mayor John Tory says Ottawa has offered nothing to help deal with Toronto’s refugee crisis

“Toronto has a long history of welcoming refugees but the city can no longer absorb the cost and impact of the increasing numbers of refugee claimants coming into the country,” Mayor John Tory wrote.

City staff say some of the claimants crossed the border in Manitoba, but most came via Quebec. Last month, after Quebec said it was overwhelmed, federal officials said they started a “triage” plan to fast-track newcomers to Ontario.

On Thursday, the Centennial campus whirred as usual -- students huddled together in computer labs, sat in hallway floors, knees up and laptops out, or chatted idly in the bright afternoon sun. Some students were staying in the residences over the summer months for classes, conferences or work in the city. There aren’t plans to integrate them with their neighbours yet, Etkin said.

But their living quarters will be the same.

Each suite has four rooms, with a small common area and a basic kitchen. The set-up would be great, Etkin said, for a large family or two small ones. Resources will be set up in common areas in the corner of each floor, including one for the Red Cross -- which anticipates fielding questions about anything from legal aid to making refugee claims to getting food and clothing.

“As you can imagine, no matter where you come from or your circumstances -- and sometimes it can be a very traumatic or difficult circumstance, or whatever the case may be -- you’re arriving to a new metropolitan city, and it can be a bit challenging to know where to go and how to connect appropriately,” Etkin explained.

The Red Cross, one of several organizations banding together as a safety net for the new arrivals, has been operating a first contact program for refugees since 2001. “We look at safety and security and ease and efficiency of operations,” she said of potential housing situations, noting that the enclosed green space on campus was a plus. “It just sort of hit all the marks,” she said.

As of June 1, the city will also begin using 400 beds at Humber College in Etobicoke. Ontario has committed up to $3 million in Red Cross staffing costs as part of the anticipated total cost.

For the next 75 days, the contingency plan will cost $6.3 million. Then, in early August, the rooms will have to be returned for students as they flood back to campus. At that time, the city may require municipal facilities, including active community centres, to house refugees living in the dorms.

Since April 19, the city says, 368 refugee claimants have entered Toronto’s shelter system. At the current rate, they project that refugee claimants will make up more than 53.6 per cent of shelter populations in the city by November. They anticipate $64.5 million in incurred costs by the end of 2018 from providing motel housing for refugee claimants.

“We have triggered our emergency protocol to help these families in their time of need, with some support from the Government of Ontario, but require the federal government to take immediate steps to permanently relieve this unprecedented pressure on the City’s shelter system,” Tory wrote in the release.