Asylum seekers in Toronto are being moved to hotels because of shelter shortages

Asylum seekers who are about to be kicked out of student residences in Toronto will be moving to hotels paid for by the federal government — but refugee advocates warn that a long-term plan is still sorely lacking.

The dorms have been used to house asylum seekers since May. At its height, some 800 people were sleeping in rooms typically occupied by students. They need to be cleared out by August 9, before school resumes.

As of July 31, there were 133 people remaining in the Humber College dorm and 313 still living in the Centennial College dorm, according to City of Toronto staff. Twenty-six people, making up seven families, have found permanent housing starting around August 1, in addition to the 24 families that had already been moved into permanent housing from the colleges.

After August 9, many of the families will go to the region of Peel and some to other areas of the GTA, said spokesperson Cheryl San Juan.

As of July 23, Peel region had committed 31 hotel and motel rooms to house refugee families and individuals. To date, 26 families — 77 individuals — have been placed in the region, according to Navdeep K. Dhaliwal, senior advisor to Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey.

"[Toronto] is working with the federal government and other municipalities to secure temporary accommodation for those that have not or will not be able to find permanent housing before August 9.”

As of July 31st, there are approximately 500 individuals in the dorms; hotel rooms are reserved until September 30,” Nancy Caron, spokesperson for Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada told VICE News. “This will allow city officials time to keep working to assist these individuals to find housing solutions as they normally do for those who use municipal shelters.”

“The City of Toronto officials will handle all logistics related to the movement and caring of the asylum seekers currently in the two dormitories,” she added. “Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada’s role has been to locate, book and pay for these hotel rooms. The City of Toronto retains the responsibility for transportation, logistics and all social services of the individuals that will use the hotel rooms.”

This influx of asylum seekers to Toronto has been driven by a wave of people who crossed the U.S. border into Canada irregularly, fleeing Trump related policies. In June, Toronto Mayor John Tory said the city was at capacity, with more than 3,000 people in its shelter system, making up nearly half of all people in Toronto’s shelters. The dorm accomodation was always meant to be a stop gap measure.

Several municipalities have offered to help Toronto earlier this month, including Brampton, Caledon, Mississauga and Hamilton. Hamilton will take 50 families starting August 7, also housing them in hotels and motels in the city.

Some refugee advocates are concerned about what appears to be a lack of a long-term plan for numbers of asylum seekers that should be considered “the new norm.”

Francisco Rico-Martinez, co-director of the FCJ Refugee Centre in Toronto, says the government’s promise to pay for hotel rooms until at least September 30 is “not a plan.”

“They’re going to spend millions in a matter of weeks and then we’ll be in the same situation that we were in at the beginning of the year,” he said. “Refugee houses in Toronto, we have been talking to [the City of Toronto], and we are ready to meet them about a plan to build capacity, but they’ve only responded to a very small part of the plan.”

While the city has committed to building a welcome centre where refugee claimants would be received, Rico-Martinez says the efforts need to go beyond that to create more long-term housing solutions for asylum seekers.

“We have to open more spaces, and one way is through the refugee houses, one way is to talk to the housing market to see if they’re willing to take some of the people and to the faith communities, to see if we can have a response like the Syrian situation where everyone was involved.”

There is no emergency or crisis, Rico-Martinez stresses, pointing out that the province has only received a few thousand refugee claimants.

“It’s not like it’s 150,000 or a million,” he said. “It’s manageable but we have to plan… We have to avoid the use of ‘crisis’ because this is the new norm.”

Cover image of a family being arrested by RCMP officers as they cross the border into Canada from the United States as asylum seekers on April 18, 2018. Photo by Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press