Should London rethink response to cold weather alerts after 62 people filled emergency Warming Centre its first night?

A last-minute effort saved dozens from the bitter cold Tuesday night. CTV London's Daryl Newcombe with more on the city’s response.

Last-minute efforts by city hall to temporarily open an emergency Warming Centre kept 62 homeless Londoners out of the frigid temperatures on Tuesday night.

Although Coun. Sam Trosow’s motion regarding the adequacy of city hall’s response to the Cold Weather Alert was blocked from being debated by seven members of council on Tuesday (including Mayor Josh Morgan and Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis), the opening of the overnight Warming Centre a few hours later accomplished his goal.

“I’m grateful to the city for doing this, I’m grateful to the mayor for organizing this,” Trosow told CTV News. “I think it was a wonderful thing that after that [council] meeting they turned around and organized this - it made a lot of difference in people’s lives.”

London has 396 permanent shelter beds, plus another 60 overnight spaces were opened within existing shelters as part of the city’s Extreme Weather Protocol.

It wasn’t enough.

Once the 456 overnight spaces in shelters were filled, city hall hastily opened a 58-bed emergency Warming Centre inside the Carling Heights Optimist Community Centre (CHOCC) by 10 p.m. at night.

“We know that people were being turned away from shelters, and this site is only meant to be used when the full capacity of agencies out there is full and they’ve used their ramp up capacity,” explained Mayor Josh Morgan.

Trosow believes the attendance at CHOCC might suggest the homelessness crisis has outgrown the Extreme Weather Protocol’s ability to add beds within existing shelters.

“Based on everything that happened [Tuesday], and what I anticipate will happen [Wednesday night], it shows that the city does have to re-evaluate its policies,” he said.

However, Deputy Mayor Shawn Lewis has a different take on what the 62 people attending the emergency Warming Centre means.

Lewis suggests existing funds might need to be reallocated back to winter services, “Do we need to revisit the decision [council] made earlier in the year, based on advice from the [homelessness] sector, about instead of having a winter response, we needed an all-year response.”

The mayor believes the provincial and federal governments need to fund more shelter spaces operated by frontline agencies.

“In the long run, our goal is going to be to work with the agencies to see how they can continue to surge to the level that is needed,” he said. “But at the end of the day, municipalities do not have enough resources to meet all of the demand out there.”

Trosow believes attendance at the emergency Warming Centre on Wednesday night will help determine how much more shelter space is needed during future Cold Weather Alerts.

“It will be interesting to see how many people come [Wednesday], I think its going to be a lot more people,” he said.

The emergency Warming Centre offers cots, blankets, food, and beverages.

All recreational programming has been cancelled at CHOCC until Friday at noon.

The Middlesex-London Health Unit extended the Cold Weather Alert into Thursday based on a forecasted overnight temperature of -22 degrees.