Advocates plead for Toronto warming centres to open now and year-round: Current -5 C threshold is 'arbitrary'

Housing advocates and medical experts say not enough is being done to help people experiencing homelessness as temperatures drop across the Greater Toronto Area — or throughout the rest of the year.

On Dec. 18, the city's warming centres remained closed, despite temperatures feeling like -10 with the windchill. The threshold to open the facilities is -5 C, and does not include windchill, or when Environment and Climate Change Canada issues a winter weather event warning.

According to the city of Toronto, warming centres are meant to “provide safe, warm indoor spaces for individuals to rest and access snacks, washroom facilities and referrals to emergency shelters and other community services." These facilities operate from November 15 to April 15. Only three warming centres are in operation this year throughout the GTA — downtown, in North York and in Scarborough. A fourth, in the Annex neighbourhood north of downtown Toronto, is current closed for renovations.

'Need for adequate shelter is year-round'

Advocates say that these services, along with shelters and other places of respite, are severely overcrowded and more urgently needs to be done to keep people safe.

Mika Wee is an organizer and steering committee member with Shelter and Housing Justice Network (SHJN). She says the threshold of opening the warming centres “should absolutely be changed” and that the city has been wildly inconsistent when making the decision to open — or not open — warming centres.

“It's important to recognize that the city is already failing to comply with their own standard of the -5 C, which was actually changed from the previous winter threshold of -15 C or -20 C with windchill after strong advocacy efforts from a number of community advocates,” she wrote in an email to Yahoo Canada.

The SHJN is demanding the city shift warming centres to act as low-barrier, year-round 24-hour respites, with surge capacity for extreme weather conditions.

“The need for adequate shelter is year-round, not only when temperatures reach -5 C,” Wee says.

SHJN's proposed alternative winter plan found that as of fall 2023, there were a total of 9,079 available shelter beds and approximately 11,930 unhoused people who had accessed the shelter system at least once during the last three months. This equals to 300 daily callers who weren’t able to access a bed and an average of 293 turned away from indoor spaces on a daily basis.

Wee says this inadequacy also fails to address the thousands of refugees staying outside of the shelter system, the over 700 people sleeping outdoors according to a 2021 report, and the hidden homeless population, which refers to people who live "temporarily with others but without guarantee of continued residency or immediate prospects for accessing permanent housing."

Doctor: 'Majority of cold-related injuries happen around between zero degrees and -5'  

Samantha Green, a family physician in Toronto, agrees that more facilities need to be available, and not only when the extreme cold hits.

“The majority of cold-related injuries happen around between zero degrees and -5,” she tells Yahoo Canada. “People experience frostbite, and exposure to the cold can also lead to hypothermia, as well as exacerbate chronic conditions, like asthma or chronic heart disease, and of course mental illness." .

Green would like to see the city convert warming centres into year-round drop-in respite centres, which are open 24 hours a day, regardless of the temperature.

“The threshold of -5 is arbitrary as we’ve seen and they don’t really work,” Green says. “It shows the city doesn’t really respond when the temperature does drop below -5.”

She adds that year-round facilities would also help people during extreme heat and exposure to wildfire smoke in the summer.