Etobicoke church opens doors to provide shelter to asylum seekers

Another Toronto church has stepped up to provide temporary emergency shelter to asylum seekers as the city continues to move people into indoor spaces.

Pilgrim Feast Tabernacles in Etobicoke now has 56 people staying on its premises, two of whom are pregnant women, according to Nadine Miller, a director at the church.

The church is providing beds, bedding and food. A gym located in the same plaza as the church is allowing asylum seekers to shower there and the church's landlord is providing extra space in the plaza for beds.

Church leaders are calling for volunteers to help with health care and administrative tasks. 

"We just need help," Miller told CBC Toronto on Thursday.

"Really, we need volunteers. Maybe you can write a letter for us. Maybe you can [help with] different support systems. Maybe you're a nurse and you can pass by."

The Black-led church is the third in Toronto, after Dominion Church International and Revivaltime Tabernacle in North York, to provide temporary shelter to asylum seekers  — mainly from African countries — who were denied access to the city's overwhelmed shelter system.

Many asylum seekers had been sleeping on city sidewalks outside a homeless support centre at 129 Peter St. downtown as the city and federal government went back and forth over shelter funding.

On July 18, the federal government agreed to provide $97 million and the governments of Ontario and Toronto each pledged additional money get more people into permanent housing and quickly free up spaces in the shelter system. 

One week later, the city said it had secured space for more asylum seekers and refugee claimants at two hotels and an emergency shelter location, and it referred 212 asylum seekers to indoor spaces.

Pastor Eddie Jjumba, who works at a church in Markham but volunteers at Dominion Church International in Toronto, said 20 new asylum seekers showed up at Dominion's doorstep on Tuesday night.

"I was so stressed," Jjumba said on Thursday. "We've been maxed for the last good days. We've been maxed. So I am stressed in that moment."

Dominion has been taking in asylum seekers for weeks, and the church is now at capacity because it is providing shelter to more than 100 people, he said.

Jjumba said he was worried that the church would have to send the 20 asylum seekers back to the street, which its leaders do not want to do. In that moment, he said he remembered that Pilgrim Feast Tabernacles might be able to help. He called and found out that the church indeed had space.