Homeless people allegedly being shipped to London, Ont. draws ire of deputy mayor
letter to his city colleagues, Shawn Lewis highlighted municipal data that shows 319 people arriving from outside the city in the first half of 2023 seeking homelessness support services have been sent back to communities “where they have a natural support network.”Of those 319 individuals, more than 25 per cent were initially “sent here against their will, or under false pretenses, by various individuals and organizations from outside London.”“That represents almost one person every other day,” Lewis explained in his letter.He did not identify the individuals and or organizations allegedly sending people to London for the city’s homeless resources. But he did confirm to Global News that they are aware of some locations these people are coming from.“I don’t think that it’s an organized effort on behalf of a municipal service provider, in any community, and I’m not even convinced that they’re intentionally trying to make the problem somebody else’s,” he said in an interview.“I think in some cases, these may be organizations or individuals with really good intentions.
But because they’re overwhelmed themselves, they may check a website, or do a quick Google search and say, ‘Oh, London has a lot of services, go to London, they can help you there,’ without doing the legwork to find out.”Lewis added that the city’s “current social services are beyond capacity.”“London cannot absorb all the needs of the province in terms of housing and homelessness, and no municipality can,” he said. “We’ve got 6,000 people on our housing wait-list (and) it’s going to be 10 years to house all those people.“Just in the last couple of months, more than 200 people have been turned away at night because there have been no shelter beds available to
. Read more on globalnews.ca
