Emotions high at meeting to discuss proposed men’s shelter in the Junction

Emotions ran high Thursday evening at a public meeting to discuss a proposed men’s shelter to be housed at 731 Runnymede road.

Ward 11 and 13 residents packed the cafeteria inside Archbishop Romero Catholic Secondary school, and one by one, took to the microphone to address concerns they have over the 100 bed shelter for men.

“How are you going to manage this and protect our children?” a woman asked.”You can walk downtown and you can experience it and nobody is doing anything about it.”

According to the city, staff would operate the shelter 24-7.

“Each night in Toronto, there’s about 5,000 different people who experience homelessness, about 4,500 of them are in our emergency shelter system, and about 500 are sleeping outside in the city,” Gord Tanner told the crowd.

Some residents say they’re concerned over the city’s lack of transparency in preparing to bring this type of establishment to a neighbourhood that has had its share of problems.

The city representatives on hand at the meeting organized by Ward 11 Councillor Frances Nunziata, were met with boos and yells of shame by the crowd of 300.

“I didn’t feel that site appropriate and I will not support that site,” Nunziata told the crowd. “You need to build shelters in appropriate locations, where it’s accessible, where the location is appropriate where you have proper transit and proper services.”

But not everybody who attended the meeting was against the project.

B.H. Yael took to the microphone to give a alternate opinion, that these shelters are necessary and could be executed properly, but her speech was cut short by those opposed.

“I think that the councillor is very irresponsible in her statement of lack of support for this,” Yael tells CityNews. “She is shirking her responsibility to her community and homeless people are part of her community.”

The proposal will go before the Community Development and Recreation Committee on June 23, then city council will be considering the recommendations in a meeting in July. If the shelter is approved, it will be ready to go in Spring 2017.