Plans are underway to support Toronto’s most vulnerable residents during the coldest months of the year. The city’s 2026/2027 Winter Plan for People Experiencing Homelessness, which will be in effect from from Nov. 15 to April 15, will see the addition of 1,533 shelter and housing spaces, 18 per cent more than in the previous year. Specifically, there will be 588 more permanent supportive and subsidized units, 505 new shelter and 24-hour winter respite site spaces, 254 additional warming centre spaces, and 186 surge capacity spaces. Around 500 of those spaces will be open the entire winter, while the remaining are weather dependent, the city noted. Lorraine Lam, an organizer with the advocacy group Shelter and Housing Justice Network, told CTV News Toronto that people experiencing homelessness need to know they have a stable place to go when the mercury drops. “People are surviving in the best of their abilities, but there is a huge risk for cold injury and frostbite and even death,” she said in response to the city’s plan to only keep open around 500 extra spaces all winter. The city says aside from adding more shelter and housing spaces it will also be deploying more street outreach teams focused on trying to get people indoors this winter throughout the city on days when there are extreme cold weather alerts. Workers will also be handing out cold weather supplies, warm clothing, and sleeping bags, among other things. Further, the hours of operation will be expanded at several of Toronto’s drop-ins, which provide food, healthcare, showers, a place to do laundry, and social and recreational activities for people experiencing homelessness. Those centres will be open a total of 252 more hours each week from Nov. 15 to April 15. “Our primary concerns are the expansion of shelter capacity, activating and operating warming centres, opening extra surge capacity when we hit extreme cold, increasing our street outreach services and supporting people’s supporting people’s moves into permanent and long-term housing,” Gord Tanner, general manager of the city’s Shelter and Support Services Division, said during a Monday morning news conference. The city said the emphasis of its annual winter efforts is both emergency response as well as connecting people to appropriate shelter, housing and other supports, while also endeavouring to help more unhoused people secure permanent housing. Work is now underway to add 1,600 long-term shelter spaces through the City of Toronto’s Homelessness Services Capital Infrastructure Strategy. More details about Toronto’s 2026/2027 Winter Plan for People Experiencing Homelessness plan can be found online. Refugee claimants to receive referrals Any refugee claimants who arrive in Toronto this winter will also continue to be referred to the Peel Regional Reception Centre, Tanner added. “The number of refugee claimants in our shelter system has come down significantly over the course of this year, but we’re still ready to support any folks that do arrive,” Tanner said. At the height of that crisis, in late 2024, the city sheltered about 6,500 refugee claimants on any given night in Toronto, he said, adding since then the feds have stepped providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for refugees. “Places like the Peel Regional Reception Centre are open. That supports people as soon as they arrive, connects them to the dedicated and unique services that refugee claimants are in need of, and has been quite a great success,” he noted. “Currently, in the shelter system, we’re housing about 1,200 claimants each night, but each month we see more moving to housing than we see coming in in need of support.” ‘Much larger systemic response needed’ Toronto’s general manager of Shelter and Support Services said, however, that the city’s efforts are “just a small part of the much larger systemic response needed to address” the affordability, housing and health crises that are impacting many cities across Canada. More ongoing and additional support from all levels of government is needed to really see a difference, he said. Today’s announcement comes just days after Prime Minister Mark Carney unveiled an ambitious $30 billion plan to eliminate homelessness in Canada over the next decade. Firm details of the plan that would see a partnership with other levels of government are still unclear. By the numbers The City of Toronto said it is currently accommodating roughly 7,000 people nightly, down from 9,000 last year. The number of encampments, it noted, has decreased by 67 per cent from more than 353 in October 2025 to about 118 last month. Since Jan. 1, Streets to Homes referred a total of 461 people to shelters from encampments, with more than 4,100 people moving from the shelter system into permanent housing in the last year, the city said. Further, a new report by the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario found that between 2022 and 2025, homelessness across Ontario has increased by 17.9 per cent, but has dropped by 8.2 per cent in Toronto. With files from CTV News Toronto’s Melissa Duggan
