Toronto’s 2025–26 Winter Services Plan for People Experiencing Homelessness claims to keep residents safe during the city’s coldest months, but advocates say it is still leaving many exposed.
From Nov. 15, 2025, to Apr. 15, 2026, Toronto says it has added 1,275 new shelter and housing spaces. That is slightly more than the 1,200 spaces added temporarily for last winter.
This year’s spaces include about 370 permanent supportive or subsidized housing units, nearly 490 new shelter or 24 hour winter respite spaces, 244 warming centre spaces which are opened when temperatures hit -5° C, and 175 additional surge-capacity spots during extreme cold.
But there still aren’t enough spots for everyone. And temperature thresholds make matters worse. Warming centres only open at -5° C or during extreme weather alerts, yet hypothermia and frostbite can strike at much higher temperatures.
Daily usage data shows Toronto’s shelter system has been operating at the brink. On Feb. 1, the shelter system was functionally full, with 9,638 people accommodated citywide and most programs operating at 95–100 per cent capacity.
Hotel-based temporary housings were operating at 99.8 per cent occupancy with only three unoccupied rooms across the city. Temporary response sites on several days this winter have been 100 per cent full and possibly even crowded to over 100 per cent.
This all means that there is no room for temporary isolation or recovery programs, leaving no buffer for infectious disease outbreaks or medical isolation during winter months.
Diana Chan McNally, an outreach worker, stresses that “people can develop hypothermia even at ten degrees Celsius. The disabling aspect of the cold is really under-addressed. I’ve literally picked up a man’s blackened toe that fell out of his boot. Losing all of your fingers or toes makes it hard to do things we take for granted, like walk or hold a spoon.”
McNally also pointed out that drop-in centres — places that offer immediate services such as food, healthcare, laundry, and showers — close at night, leaving few overnight options.
She recalls when warming centres were drastically cut during the years when John Tory was mayor. McNally and her team considered it a victory at the time to have reopened even one warming centre one winter during the pandemic.
Today, McNally says, “We both have far more homelessness and less resources than we had pre-pandemic.”
The City’s 2024 Street Needs Assessment showed that homelessness in Toronto has more than doubled since 2021, skyrocketing from 7,300 people in April 2021 to 15,400 in the fall of 2024.
The Shelter and Housing Justice Network (SHJN) called Toronto’s 2025–2026 winter homelessness plan “atrociously inadequate,” arguing it provides far too few shelter and warming spaces for the growing crisis. Their spokesperson said the plan sets people up for “more failure and harm,” and released a community-informed alternative plan which calls for more 24-hour spaces, non-congregate options and real pathways to permanent housing.
Leslie Gash of Toronto Shelter Network — an umbrella organisation of groups that run various homelessness relief services such as emergency shelters and drop-in centres — shared that many of the spaces added for this winter “will fill almost immediately, leaving the system stretched, reactive, and unable to meet demand despite the public perception that hundreds of new spots ensure adequate coverage.”
Advocates also note that municipal efforts alone cannot solve homelessness. Provincial and federal policy decisions have exacerbated the crisis, including cuts to the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit and insufficient funding for refugees seeking shelter.