Council endorses plan to adjust criteria for opening warming shelters

A vocal majority at London city hall has agreed to expand the criteria to open warming centres

City council has endorsed a plan to lower the threshold for when public warming centres are opened, allowing homeless Londoners to take shelter from extreme cold more often.

The motion passed unanimously, but not without some reservations expressed.

“We’ve got tons of garbage, open drug use everywhere – in a family neighbourhood. People are driving around, they’re walking, they can’t go out, they don’t feel safe to go out to walk their dog at 10 o’clock at night. It’s unacceptable,” said Ward 4 Coun. Susan Stevenson. “I still support it. I’m still going to vote yes because people need to come inside this winter.”

The so-called tier-3 surge response will be activated when the temperature drops to minus 15 C or minus 20 windchill, a change from the previous standard of minus 15 with a windchill of minus 20.

The change will result in tripling the number of nights the Boyle Community Centre opens each winter, from 10 to about 30.

The expanded service is estimated to cost $290,000.

Council will also have staff examine how other extreme weather alerts from Environment Canada can be worked into the warming centre framework in the future.

“The ice storm that happened at the end of December was a yellow. Red is a tornado- extreme, extreme. So yellow is still pretty extreme. So when I say extreme weather alerts, I mean all three. And that’s why I’m trying to specify the ice storm and the freezing rain,” said Ward 11 Coun. Skylar Franke.