Are emergency shelters, soup kitchens and sleeping bags the answer?
Municipalities, social agencies and charities, in their efforts to cope with the rising numbers of people without housing, have expanded and developed emergency services that help people survive. These typically include emergency shelters, daytime drop-in services, specialized winter services such as Toronto’s Out of the Cold program and the Extreme Cold Weather Alert program, various kinds of outreach services, telephone “street helplines,” and various physical and mental health care services. At present, people without housing have very few choices in Canadian cities. They can voluntarily institutionalize themselves one night at a time – go to an emergency shelter if there is enough room and if they meet the criteria – or sleep outdoors (on sidewalks, in doorways, under bridges, in parking structures, and in abandoned buildings, and the like). Emergency shelters are institutions that have become the catch-all for many of the problems that cannot be handled elsewhere. They often lack
