Refugee Housing Crisis: In Response to the Government's $362 Million Funding Pledge
By Grace Jeffries
On February 1st, 2024, Canada's Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller revealed plans of the Federal government to pledge $362 million in response to the refugee housing crisis affecting major cities across the country. The creation of the pledge comes to fulfill the calls for help from Premiers and Mayors, specifically those in Quebec (Montreal) and Ontario (Toronto), as they battle firsthand with a lack of funding to adequately support the influx of asylum seekers in the country. At the head of the pushback, along with many others, is Toronto’s new mayor Olivia Chow, who on her first day in office (June 12, 2023), called on the federal government to take accountability for the housing crisis and problems they created within the Canadian immigration system. Chow recognized that with the budget the city of Toronto has, it is nearly impossible to provide adequate housing support with the existing infrastructure of the city.
Of the almost 9,000 people that Toronto shelters support, more than 35 % of them exist as refugees. The shelters are also at capacity meaning that the recent massive influx of refugees coming into the country are met with little to no housing support when arriving in Toronto. In fact, as of June 2023 (when Chow came into office) Toronto’s shelter system began turning away refugees and asylum seekers and pointing them to Federal housing services to put pressure on the federal system to help with the crisis. The problem with such actions lies in the fact that the Federal housing and shelter system is also overrun with refugees and asylum seekers and thereby was also forced to turn away the incoming flow of Toronto refugees. To receive federal help, asylum seekers must have a fully granted status claim which often can take up to or more than a year to process. By denying refugees provincial housing and sending them to federal doors with unprocessed claims the city is leaving them in a housing limbo with nowhere to look for assistance.
The famous Peter St. incident of the summer of 2023 provides great insight into the housing crisis as the large congregation of houseless refugees spiked from a stalemate organized by Chow between Toronto and the federal shelters. Her encouragement to send refugees to federal shelters and impose pressure led many immigrants (mostly immigrants from African countries) to sleep in the streets for many weeks with no access to proper shelter, limited access to cooling during warm temperatures, little access to food and water, and massive levels of uncertainty surrounding their future as a refugee. Protests surged when a contrast between the reception areas created for the Ukrainian refugees during the influx at the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war and the images of many racialized refugees sleeping and being forced to exist on the streets of Toronto began to emerge. Many advocates for refugee rights came forward and pointed to the racist undertones that lay among the process of deciding to use these refugees to finally make a stand for the federal government rather than providing them with the same acceptance and reliable housing as the Ukrainian refugees were afforded.
There is an apparent need for more governmental action when it comes to housing and welcoming new refugees. Canada exists as one of the top 10 countries by Nominal GDP and yet refugees are left to rely on non-governmental and faith and community-based organizations to help guide them through the complicated process of adjusting to a new country. The amount the federal government has offered ($362 million) will be split across major Canadian cities experiencing a refugee housing crisis and is not nearly enough to scratch the surface of the problem. The government's use of stop-gap measures to fund the refugee housing crisis is not adequate to cover the costs of the massive influx of asylum seekers coming into the country. The call to change the way the government manages visas in turn could allow asylum seekers to be granted permanent residency at a faster rate and be granted aid from the federal government. As such, the financial bearing on the provincial governments could lessen allowing for better access to resources and better allocation of funding for incoming asylum seekers. The issues on Peter St. set an example for the need for asylum-seeking policy reform and an increase in federal support for asylum seekers.
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