

Vidya Kauri and Chris Fox, CP24.com





Additional services for the homeless have been triggered following the death of two people in frigid temperatures over the last two nights.

The City of Toronto has announced that it will open up two 24-hour warming centres centres and add an additional 30 shelter spaces as the temperature gets set to plummet to -15 C overnight.

Street outreach teams will also be out encouraging the homeless to seek shelter at one of the following warming centres:

Margaret's Toronto East Drop In, 323 Dundas St. E.

St Felix Centre, 25 Augusta Ave.

The move comes as the city’s medical officer of health faces criticism for not yet issuing an extreme cold weather alert, which would have automatically triggered the additional services.

An alert is usually issued when the temperature is -15 C or below, when there are factors that increase the impact of cold weather on health such as wind chill and precipitation, or when there are several days and nights of cold weather in a row.

“The mayor, as many of us did during the day, said it is cold now and it will be colder overnight and he used the authority that was open to him to address this without waiting for the technical implementation by the medical officer of health,” Coun. Norm Kelly told CP24 on Tuesday afternoon. “He did the right thing.”

According to a news release from the city, the medical officer of health is expected to issue an extrme cold weather alert Wednesday morning.

Speaking with CP24, Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam said the city could have been "more proactive" in issuing an alert earlier, but she is encouraged that additional homeless services have been triggered for tonight.

On Tuesday at around 5:30 a.m., when the mercury was hovering around -19 C with the wind chill, a man wearing only a T-shirt, blue jeans and a hospital bracelet was found without vital signs in a TTC streetcar shelter at Yonge and Dundas streets. Paramedics’ efforts to revive him were unsuccessful and he was pronounced dead en route to hospital.

Toronto police said the cold may have contributed to the death of the homeless man, believed to be in his 40s or 50s, but this cannot be known for certain until a post-mortem examination has been completed.

During an extreme cold weather alert, the city’s protocol is to open warming centres throughout Toronto and to dispatch outreach workers onto the streets to help bring the homeless to shelter.

On social media, a hashtag #CalltheAlert began trending on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. Wong-Tam tweeted that she has asked the medical officer for a response and to open warming centres.

A cold weather alert has not yet been called for this winter.

While speaking to reporters at city hall Tuesday afternoon, Mayor John Tory said the criteria for the city’s medical officer of health to declare a cold weather alert is flexible “in favour of homeless people.”

Tory said "we have to re-double our efforts" to protect homeless people, ensure that cold weather alerts are being declared when they have to be and provide additional facilities and shelters when the alerts come into effect.

The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty staged a protest outside Mayor John Tory’s office on Tuesday calling for the city to not only immediately open warming centres but also to provide more affordable housing for those left out in the cold. They are also urging the city to create a poverty reduction strategy.

Zoe Dodd, a spokesperson for OCAP also said the criteria for declaring an extreme cold weather alert is too strict.

“The mayor has the ability and power to do something when people’s lives are in danger,” Dodd said, warning that the city is in a “crisis” when people are dying from the cold on the streets.

Just before 2:30 p.m., Amanda Galbraith, Tory's spokesperson, said that the mayor had asked the city manager to open up warming centres, and that this is expected to happen immediately.

Earlier in the day, Tory said a general review of the city's shelters, which he said are over capacity with "far too many people with mental health issues" in them, is underway. The results of that review are expected in March.

Jake Aikenhead, director of the Gateway Shelter at Jarvis and Richmond streets, said the shelter regularly turns away people due to a lack of beds.

“We do turn people away because we don’t have any beds left, and that’s something we face every single night,” Aikenhead told CP24. “In that sense, it’s first come, first serve.”

Members of the Church of the Holy Trinity organized a vigil at Yonge-Dundas square Tuesday afternoon in honour of the men who died this week.

On Monday, the lifeless body of another man, also believed to be homeless, was found inside a delivery truck at a shipping yard in the city's west end, near Davenport Road and Lansdowne Avenue. The death came in the midst of a special weather statement that Environment Canada had issued for Toronto warning of extreme cold and brisk winds. The temperature was around -22 C with the wind chill at the time of the death, according to the national weather agency.

@VidyaKauri is on Twitter. Follow @CP24 for instant breaking news.