Asylum seeker living in car after being evicted from government-funded hotel room

One look inside the car and it's obvious someone has been living in it.

There are shirts on hangers dangling from the passenger-side window hook. In the back seat, there's a blanket, a pillow and an eye mask.

The vehicle has been home to an asylum seeker since his recent eviction from a hotel leased by the federal government. CBC News is not naming the man because he's afraid he will be sent back to his country, where he fears for his safety, as he's still waiting for a hearing on his refugee claim in Canada.

"It's very difficult. It's very cold at night," he said. "Sometimes, I don't have a place to go to the washroom, to change my clothes."

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has rules for asylum seekers in its hotels across the country that, if broken, could result in occupants receiving short-term eviction notices that leave them with little choice but to sleep on the streets or, in this case, in their car in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis.

The reception of asylum seekers is an issue for many countries, including Canada, as they grapple with ongoing irregular migration patterns and polarized public opinion.

Ottawa recently announced a roughly 20 per cent reduction in the number of permanent residents in 2025 — from a previous target of 500,000 to 395,000 — amid recent polls showing Canadians have an increasingly negative attitude toward immigration.

Two and a half years ago, the man arrived in Canada from North Africa through Roxham Road — a rural road that became an unofficial border crossing between Quebec and the United States for thousands of asylum seekers — and was living in one of the hotels in the Greater Toronto Area. But following a dispute with his roommate, he was recently given an eviction notice stating he had three days to leave.

"I [cannot] imagine this," he said. "We are in Canada," he said.

CBC News has viewed the document, which cited the reasons for the eviction as "failure to meet with IRCC representative" and "aggressive" behaviour.

The asylum seeker said he did miss a meeting because he mixed up the time but denies he was ever aggressive with his roommate or IRCC employees.

"It's not fair," he said. "I don't make any problem. I don't know why [they] say I am aggressive."

He told CBC News the immigration officer insisted the reason for his eviction was due to the meeting and not the issue with the roommate. In the final eviction meeting, he said he was told that he could live in his car.

In a statement to CBC News, IRCC said it couldn't discuss specific cases due to privacy issues. But it said eviction notices for aggressive behaviour can be given "with very short duration due to safety concerns" and that eviction notices related to aggressive behaviour are "infrequent."