TTC announces one-year pilot to better support unhoused people in the transit system

The City of Toronto is partnering with a community organization to add more outreach workers to the TTC.

Starting this month, five case managers, one nurse, and one team lead from LOFT (Leap of Faith Together) Community Services will be deployed to TTC properties to assist individuals experiencing homelessness in accessing physical and mental health services.

The idea behind the one-year pilot project is to offer a “case management approach to ongoing care” by helping vulnerable people who are in need of more complex and longer-term supports, the city said in a news release.

The plan is for the new enhanced service to connect 80 to 100 individuals experiencing homelessness with case workers and health care professionals, including registered nurses, over the course of the next year.

“I'm very pleased that we are partnering with LOFT Community Services to strengthen our people-first TTC support. I want to emphasize that it's a people-first addressing of a challenge,” said North York Coun. Shelley Carrol, who introduced the last-minute budget motion that resulted in the $500,000 needed to create the new service.

The new project is essentially an expansion of the city-funded Multi-Disciplinary Outreach Team (M-DOT) program, which delivers services to vulnerable individuals to the TTC.

Heather McDonald, CEO of LOFT Community Services, said the new funding will allow them to support people who are sheltering in the transit system in a "really meaningful manner.”

“We will be using the funds to increase staff capacity of the outreach team and providing frontline support at TTC’s public spaces,” she said. “This will be a benefit to the entire community. It will be a benefit to a vulnerable population or resource to the TTC staff and a comfort for all transit users.”

Several incidents on the TTC earlier this year prompted Toronto police to deploy 80 additional officers to patrol the system. Those extra patrols began in late January and ended on March 13.

The TTC has also recently added 20 more Streets to Homes workers to patrol the transit system. The agency has also upped the visibility of management and staff throughout the network, improved and added cameras in all stations and on all vehicles, and implemented Designated Waiting Areas on every subway platform with recently-upgraded and easier-to-use two-way communications systems that link directly to TTC staff.

Last week, the TTC also introduced two new safety/security reporting measures.

Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie said many of Toronto’s most vulnerable residents, along with the city’s resources, have been deeply impacted by the pandemic.

She said that the pandemic has “worsened homelessness and mental health struggles within our city, leaving the TTC more vulnerable to these challenges.”

“Now more than ever, it is important that we work together across sectors to support Torontonians in need,” she said.

McKelvie said that more than 200 unhoused individuals have been referred to shelter space since January as a result of the placement of Streets to Homes workers on the TTC.

Monica Mason, of the transit advocacy group TTCriders, said increasing investment in mental health support on the TTC is a “really good first step towards increasing supporting staff and the system.”

She said there are many other things that can be done to make the system safer, including putting in place teams of ambassadors as well as reversing service cuts, which were announced during this budget process, to improve the frequency of buses, streetcars, and trains, and reduce crowding in the system among other things.

Mason also said that the provincial and federal governments need step up and ensure adequate funding is made available to the city for public transit.

In terms of next steps, like City of Toronto outreach teams, staff from LOFT staff will also be collecting data throughout the pilot and reporting on things like the number of interactions with vulnerable people on the TTC, the rate of acceptance of service and shelter, and what services were accepted.

"This data collection will ensure that vulnerable people on the TTC are being adequately served by the current support offerings," city spokesperson Alex Burke told CP24.com.

"The city and TTC will be working to evaluate the data with LOFT throughout the pilot and making any needed adjustments on an ongoing basis. This ongoing evaluation will feed into future decisions about supports."