‘I think it could go better’: Looking for improvements to London’s emergency shelter response

A city committee hopes to have a plan in place for extreme cold weather events, CTV’s Reta Ismail reports.

The Carling Heights Community Centre was turned into a temporary emergency warming centre for 64 hours last week, providing shelter and warm meals for unhoused individuals.

“It’s definitely the first time we’ve done that for a cold weather for people experiencing homelessness, previous years, we’ve obviously had a winter response and we’ve created extra capacity,” said Craig Cooper, the Housing Stability Services Director for the City of London.

The city says due to the growth in the unsheltered population, there wasn’t enough space at any of the local agencies to house the nearly 132 individuals who used the temporary shelter over the three days.

At the Community and Protective Services Committee meeting today, city staff gave a briefing about how the centre operated, noting the complexity of the ‘high acuity’ individuals.

“We tapped into city staff from a number of different service areas across the corporation, and we were supported by a number of community agencies,” explained Kevin Dickins, Deputy City Manager, Social & Health Development.

Ward 6 Councillor Sam Trosow brought forward a motion to look at how the situation could be handled differently in the future.

“I do think it’s important for the city council itself to be more involved in these matters in terms of coming up with a framework. I think this went well, and I think it could go better,” said Trosow.

The motion was amended to include a review of climate conditions during extreme weather events, with recommendations from the Chief Medical Officer of Health, and to look at alternatives to using a community centre.

“Places like churches, charitable or not-for-profit organizations that have spaces that might be available, as well as opportunities to utilize some of those community volunteers, who help out at some of these agencies as well,” recommended Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis.

Although the cost associated with running the warming centre has not yet been determined, the motion was amended to include future funding requests.

“If we are going to put this in an emergency operations category, then we should be looking to the province to help come forward with some emergency and disaster relief funding to assist with the resourcing of these,” said Lewis.

Council unanimously approved the motion, with all the amendments.