TORONTO

Can the homeless be forced to come in from the cold when the temperature dips to record levels with a windchill of -33C or more as it did this week?

Apparently not.

“We cannot force them,” said Phillip Abrahams, the city’s general manager of shelter, support and housing. “My staff don’t have the ability to force anybody into service.”

In fact, on Tuesday night, Abrahams said the city’s Street Outreach team encountered 19 or 20 people who were checked on more than once and all refused to “accept service of any kind.”

On Wednesday morning, Abrahams said he walked along King St. from the subway to Metro Hall and passed at least one person sleeping on the street.

If someone looks like they’re “really in distress” people can call 911 or police to get them into care, he said.

“The people who are on the street have very complex mental health issues and the street outreach folks can work with individuals sometimes for years ... and then something happens and they accept service,” he said.

Richard Dunbar, who lives on the street in the summer but stays mostly at churches or synagogues offering Out of the Cold programs over the winter, said a lot of people are “stuck in their own ways.”

“Addiction plays a big role so how can you force people to do what they don’t want to do?” he said.

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s John Clarke said he doesn’t know under “what legal basis” you can demand that someone come into shelter.

“We are more concerned about the numbers of people trying to get in (to shelters) and can’t,” Clarke said.

Toronto Police Const. Wendy Drummond said officers can only intervene — under the authority of Ontario’s Mental Health Act — if someone they encounter on the streets appears to have mental health issues or is “unable to care for themselves” and is putting him or herself at risk.

Drummond said officers will do a street-level assessment and, if the homeless person they encounter, for example, is not properly clothed for the elements or has no shoes or if they don’t understand where they can go, police have the right to take that person to a shelter or the city’s warming centre.

“It’s really based on the conversation (an officer has with the homeless person),” she said. “Do they understand how cold it is? Have they made a conscious decision to stay outside?”

Mayor Rob Ford came under fire from poverty activists early in his term in 2010 when he suggested on The John Oakley show that the homeless should be forced to come inside during bouts of severe cold weather — a point with which I agree.

THE HOMELESS FILE

Homeless found living outdoors in the 2013 street census: 447

Homeless living outdoors, in shelters or other facilities in same census: 5,253

2014 budget for Streets to Homes program: $13.9 million

— Includes $6.7 million for city staff and $7.2 million for community agencies to assist with housing follow-up/street outreach

2013-14 (winter) budget for Out of the Cold programs: $930,000

Number of Out of the Cold sites: 18

Number of social workers on Streets to Homes team: 66

Peter St. assessment centre budget: $3.45 million

Occupancy in men’s hostels this past week: 92%

Number of men and women at Metro Hall warming centre Tuesday night: 50

Extreme cold weather alert means: