FACT: It remains unclear how many people the City has housed in permanent housing during the pandemic, and how many remain housed.

On December 3, 2020, 11 days after the claim above was made, the City made another statement in a news release with the headline, “City of Toronto continues to take extraordinary steps to help and protect people experiencing homelessness during COVID-19,” saying that it had “referred more than 2,500 people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing” so far this year.¹ A ”referral” is when a service provider “refers” a person to another service provider who may be able to help a person access permanent housing. It does not mean a person was housed.² With 2,500 referrals over an 11 month period, the City was referring an average of 227 people each month to housing in 2020. For both of these statements to be true, in the eleven days between these two statements, not only would the City have had to increase its average rate of housing by more than 3.5 times, but it would have had to make up the gap between the referrals and the people who were actually housed and housing this additional number of people. This seems implausible. What is more likely, is that the 2,800 claim is incorrect and instead 2,800 individuals were referred to permanent housing.

What makes this claim difficult to interpret and verify, is the lack of data provided to substantiate it. When the City’s Housing Secretariat claimed that 2,800 people had been housed, the only concrete data it provided was, “325 units were occupied and 450 individuals housed, an additional 450 units are proposed to be filled over the next 3 months.” This data clarifies that 450 people were indeed housed, but leaves the housing status of the remaining 2,350 people unknown.³

We don’t know how many people actually successfully secured permanent housing and how many of them have remained housed, or how this compares with last year.

The City is housing people through a combination of housing allowances and rent-geared-to-income units.⁴ Typically, housing allowances are time-limited, lasting for 5 years, which undermines the supposed permanency of the housing.⁵ Also, housing allowances, by definition, “may not completely cover the gap between an affordable rent… and the market rent,” which increases the likelihood of a person becoming homeless again.⁶ Further, the numbers of people referred and housed includes housing placements that were planned and budgeted for prior to the pandemic, not only emergency COVID-19 placements, and so it is misleading to refer to these placements as “extraordinary steps” taken by the City.^{7, 8}

Notes:

City Claim: Bond, A. (December 14, 2020). Attachment 1 – Update on the Ongoing COVID-19 Emergency Shelter Response.

1. City of Toronto Press Release, December 3, 2020.
2. For information about how referrals work within the shelter system see: Carbone, G. (February 20, 2018). CD26.5 Update on Shelter Services. Community Development and Recreation Committee, Toronto City Council, p.57. Referrals work similarly for housing. 
3. Bond, A. (December 14, 2020). Attachment 1 – Update on the Ongoing COVID-19 Emergency Shelter Response. Toronto City Council; City of Toronto Press Release, December 3, 2020.
4. Ibid.
5. See City of Toronto. (n.d.). “Housing allowance subsidies.” Subsidized Housing & Housing Benefits; Toronto Drop-in Network. (2020). Pandemic Housing Initiatives. 
6. Toronto. (2019). Housing + Homelessness Service Glossary 2019, p. 9.
7. City of Toronto Press Release, December 3, 2020; Gibson, V. (August 13, 2020). Toronto says it’s moved more than 1,500 people from shelters into permanent housing since COVID-19 hit. But that figure doesn’t tell the whole story . The Star.
8. For more on this issue, see Toronto Drop-in Network’s Post: Pandemic Housing Initiatives.