Homelessness study gives insight into the city’s most vulnerable

Thestar.com
March 28, 2019
Emily Mathieu

Mobility issues, battles with addiction, a lack of adequate funds and discrimination are just some of the barriers to housing identified by the guests of the Out of the Cold program as part of a new study by Dixon Hall Neighbourhood Services.

Those personal insights into the struggles of guests using the volunteer-led overnight service--along with people who have moved through or are staying in the city’s close to capacity emergency shelter system--come just as the winter cold relief program is winding down for another season.

The city expects by late May to have the second and third of three large city-funded domes purchased to act as 24-7 respite sites in operation. Those sites, Greg Seraganian with the city’s shelter, support and housing administration division says, will stay in place until council makes good on a promise to open 1,000 new emergency shelter beds. Once that target is reached the program will be reassessed, he told the Star in an email.

Street nurse and advocate Cathy Crowe said activists have been calling for emergency structures since the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee declared homelessness a national disaster about two decades ago but these domes cannot safely hold 100 people.

“They are too crowded, there is not enough space. They are loud, diseases can spread very easily and the tensions mount and there is increased violence, and they are undignified,” said Crowe, speaking as part of the Shelter and Housing Justice Network. “Nobody in their right mind would think it was acceptable for them for more than two nights if their basement flooded.”

Dixon Hall provides supports to the operators of Out of the Cold, which provides food, tokens, rest and support to people struggling to survive in Canada’s largest city.

How the city could better serve occupants of the respite domes, former and frequent guests of the Out of the Cold program, or one-time or current residents of the city’s emergency shelter system is part of the new study from Dixon Hall, called Innovative Solutions to Homlessness, released Wednesday.

The information for the study was collected in two stages, in June and then in October 2018, and included focus groups and survey questions, and a final stage with interviews with 37 Out of the Cold program participants and 36 residents of an emergency shelter.

Cellphones were given to 51 Out of the Cold program users to help facilitate communication with researchers and housing workers. While the guests reported they were a useful tool, close to half were lost or stolen over the course of the study, which the authors said further points to the instability of the environments participants are staying in.

The authors stressed a total of 1,260 people used the Out of the Cold program over the previous year, according to the report.

Because of the small number of study participants, the authors said, the findings do not represent the entire population who uses the system but did include valuable insights that will be used in future conversations around services.

“This is a group of people who very much depend on this program during the winters. There are respondents who have been using this program year-after-year, for more than 20 years,” lead study author Tanzil Islam said.

Among the study findings, Islam said, was that about 38 per cent of the Out of the Cold participants said they struggled with addiction issues, which not only pose challenges in term of their quality of life but also have implications in terms of poverty and life expectancy.

They also, as a group, had experienced homelessness for longer periods of time than shelter residents and more than 60 per cent self-identified as having mobility issues, which the authors found was linked to longer periods of homelessness and increased difficulty finding a home.

Dixon Hall data co-ordinator Monica Sarty said what was surprising was that participants from the Out of the Cold program also reported using a wide range of community support services, including community dinners, drop-in centres and medical clinics, bolstering the argument that more should be in place for people in need.

“We sort of thought they were fiercely independent and resisted using shelters and so we assumed they resisted using other services,” Sarty said.

The baseline recommendation, she said, is always to work toward income security and to ensure that people have the money need to actually get into a clean and safe place to live. “That can’t be ignored,” she said.