Two weeks after the City of Toronto said it would begin referring refugee claimants seeking beds in its at-capacity shelter system to federal programs, asylum seekers who recently arrived in Canada are struggling to find places to sleep.
Birck Teklau arrived in Toronto from Ethiopia on June 3 hoping to claim asylum because, he says, of political persecution in his home country.
The 34-year-old says he’s been sleeping on the streets ever since — after being turned away from the city’s shelter system day after day.
“I tried many times…. They say that we don’t have [a] place,” Teklau said in an interview. “I never expected this from Canada.”
Perfect Manufactured Storm … Annual rate of housing starts in Canada fell 23% in May
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in May dropped 23 per cent compared with April as starts of apartments, condos and other types of multi-unit housing projects in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal fell.
The national housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts was 202,494 units in May, down from 261,357 units in April.
