With more people than ever sleeping rough, homeless shelters have resorted to putting out mats and plastic chairs for spaces to sleep.
People in Ottawa who are experiencing homelessness have resorted to sleeping in plastic chairs at shelters in hopes of finding a warm place to stay for the night, according to The Ottawa Mission.
There are approximately 2,952 homeless people in Ottawa according to this year’s Point-in-Time (PiT) count done by the city. This year’s count was done from Oct. 23, 2024 to Oct. 24, 2024. This is a 13 per cent increase from the 2021 count of 2,612 people experiencing homelessness, which was the last time they completed the count.
The PiT count is a national effort to gather information about homelessness in Canada. Volunteers fan out across the city over a 24-hour period to count as precisely as they can the number of people living on the street, and the areas they congregate.
The City of Ottawa said the full report will be available in February 2025.
The Shepherds of Good Hope experiences overflow and over-capacity issues as the season gets colder, Bernie Forestell, senior manager of communications, said. The shelter will let people sleep in the lobby to “get out of the cold” if necessary, he said.
“It’s not the norm but it does happen,” Forestell said. “We know the cold is very dangerous.”
When the shelter gets to capacity, Forestell said they place mats down on the floor to ensure people can still have a place to sleep.
“We will bring mats in and put people where we can but that’s not the ideal situation,” Forestell said.
He says that shelters in Ottawa keep in contact with each other to transfer people if needed and ensure they have shelter for the night.
Aileen Leo, director of communications at The Ottawa Mission, said they continue to face high demand for shelter spaces. When individuals come seeking shelter, Leo said they choose to wait days in the Mission’s lounge on plastic chairs in case a bed opens up.
Evening Update
“We have people sleeping on chairs in our lounge,” Leo said. “There’s nowhere else for them to go.”
The shelter houses 246 beds, including in-treatment beds and sleeping mats laid on the chapel floor.
In April 2024, the Ottawa Mission released its annual report that highlighted “epidemic levels” of food insecurity and homelessness. The report said that it served more than one million meals between 2022 and 2023 — the same number as Ottawa’s population.
Leo said cities need support from provincial and federal governments to help combat homelessness.
“These problems are the result of decades of policy decisions that have placed more people in jeopardy of being homeless [and] being food insecure.”
Leo said she is supportive of the city’s sprung shelters and turning recreation centres into dorms to house asylum seekers but explains that these are temporary measures alongside people sleeping in shelters’ lounges.
“We need far more supportive housing and affordable housing,” Leo said.
Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Rawlson King said investing in transitional and temporary housing, including the sprung shelters, will alleviate some pressures and get people back on their feet.
King said these challenges are not being properly supported by senior levels of government.
“The challenge for any municipal government is that we have a lot of the challenges and we don’t have a lot of resources,” King said.
King said city council has been responding with additional investments to address homelessness through approaches like transitional housing and other social services. While this is a positive step forward, King said more investments were “vital” to address the crisis.
In the final budget for 2025, the city announced more than $48.5 million to support the shelter system and housing assistance programs.
“The city needs those supports to ensure that people who are here, who have decided to make Ottawa home…have proper support,” King said.
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