A street nurse who led the charge in pushing for the opening of the Moss Park Armoury as an emergency shelter took the city’s ombudsman on a tour of a 24-7 winter respite site on Friday to highlight the need for more permanent shelter spaces.

The city has turned to temporary winter-respite sites as a means to deal with a shortage in conventional shelter spaces.

The sites, which are run by partner agencies, offer the homeless a place to escape the cold and in many cases get a hot meal but they do not meet the standards that the city sets for permanent shelters.

In an interview with CP24 on Saturday, Cathy Crowe said that she decided to take Ombudsman Susan Opler for a tour of one of the facilities on Friday so she could see the conditions for herself.

Opler’s office is currently probing communication issues that led to some people being wrongly turned away from one of the city’s respite sites amid the extreme cold last weekend.

“I took her to one of the east end respite centres because I wanted her to see the conditions there,” Crowe said. “None of the respite centres meet city shelter standards so imagine this: there is not enough washrooms, maybe no showers, no cots except for the Better Living Centre and not enough staff and help as well.”

In the winter of 2017, the city had two 24-7 respite sites. The city began this winter with five sites but quickly opened a sixth at the Better Living Centre after it became clear that more spaces were needed.

The Moss Park Armoury will be the city’s seventh winter respite site once it opens for a two-week period on Monday.

“It is the worst I have seen in 31 years as a street nurse,” Crowe said of the crowding in the city’s shelter system. “Last year we had two 24-hour emergency shelters and this year we are up to seven or eight. The numbers speak for themselves.”

The city has a total of 5,460 shelter spaces but the occupancy rate system-wide regularly exceeds 95 per cent.