Toronto winter services plan won’t keep everyone warm this season, advocates say

TORONTO – Housing advocates say Toronto’s winter services plan to help those experiencing homelessness is an improvement from previous years, but there’s still more work to be done to keep people warm and dry this winter. 

Starting on Saturday, the City of Toronto added 1,275 shelter spaces for people experiencing homelessness to its shelter system for the winter. The plan, which will last until April 15, features “an emphasis on both emergency response and moving more people into permanent housing,” city spokesperson Elise von Scheel said.

It adds 370 permanent and supportive subsidized housing units, 244 warming respite centres that will open when temperatures hit -5 C or lower or during winter weather warnings, as well as 490 new shelter spaces and 175 surge capacity spaces during extreme temperatures. 

“The city continues to look for ways to maximize finite resources to care for the most vulnerable during the winter, while remaining nimble to adjust to these shifting needs,” von Scheel said. 

David Reycraft, the president of the Toronto Shelter Network, said he is happy to see the city open 370 new housing spaces, but adds the city is still struggling to meet the needs of those who aren’t lucky enough to get into those spaces. 

“Our system can’t meet the needs of everyone. It’s just not doing that,” Reycraft said in a recent interview. 

Reycraft said Toronto faces a “complicated reality” each year when helping the city’s unhoused population. The arrival of the cold season is an annual certainty and usually involves a “scramble” to get a winter program together, Reycraft said. Shelter beds are consistently full throughout the year and coming up with a plan to accommodate more people can be challenging. 

City data shows there were more than 9,600 people actively experiencing homelessness in September. It also shows Toronto has accommodated 8,697 people in its shelter system on average each night in October, and an average of 155 people were turned away from shelters each night. 

Beyond adding more housing units, Reycraft pointed out that although the city opens more respite spaces when the temperature dips to -5 C, there’s still a need to help keep more people warm when it’s above those temperatures. 

“I was walking around yesterday and it was two degrees or something and I was thinking ‘this is cold, I would not want to be on the streets today,'” Reycraft said.

“We need resources. We need to stop pretending that somehow winter isn’t going to come around next year.”

Melody Li echoed this sentiment. Li, who is the executive director of Homeless Connect Toronto and commended the city for adding more shelter spaces this year, says cold weather can be dangerous when the mercury is still above the – 5 C threshold because they are still vulnerable to frostbite. 

Maggie Helwig, the priest at the Church of St-Stephens-in-the-Field who wrote a book about an encampment outside her church, flagged that temperatures hovering around zero degrees can impact one’s health. 

“I really think an underestimated danger is damp … everybody’s clothing gets soaked, their socks are soaked, their sleeping bag is soaked, everything soaks. That’s when they’re most vulnerable to hypothermia and when they are most vulnerable to infections and to wounds going septic,” Helwig said. 

Both women said an additional challenge with many of the warming centres is because those spaces are often triggered by extreme temperatures, it’s difficult to get the word out when those spaces are open to a population that might not have consistent internet access. 

“You’re trying to communicate with people who don’t have email, who don’t necessarily have access to (social media),” Li said. “If you had more permanent respite locations, people know that’s available all winter long.”

Helwig would like to see the city distributing more winter supplies like hot water bottles, battery packs and other safe heating sources for those still outside. 

All three advocates say there needs to be more help from the federal and provincial governments when it comes to helping the unhoused population. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2025.