The data set provides a listing of all the active shelters serving the City of Toronto area. Included in the dataset is the name of the shelter, program name, sector served (i.e. men, women, youth, families) addresses, funded program capacity, and the number of people that occupied those spaces at 4:00 AM the next morning.
For example, the occupancy count of January 1st would be taken on January 2nd at 4 AM.
The reporting in this dataset has now been updated as a new open data set. This updated data set includes all overnight service programs administered by the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration division (e.g. 24-hour respites and COVID-19 hotel shelter programs) rather than just shelter programs. This new data set can be found here.
Note : For reasons of confidentiality, information regarding Violence Against Women shelters are removed from the dataset.
Please also note : During the COVID-19 pandemic response, shelter programs have undergone significant change. This dataset includes capacity data which are based on pre-existing funding arrangements with shelter providers, rather than the available capacity in the current COVID-19 circumstances. As programs implement physical distancing measures in their facilities, changes to program capacities often took some time to be reflected in this dataset. We advise users not to rely on capacity data to interpret current bed availability.