If you need emergency shelter: Call 311 or Central Intake at 416-338-4766 1-877-338-3398 toll free within the GTA, 24 hours. If you see someone on the street in need of assistance: Call 311 Always call 911 in an emergency.

Too cold for the street
Year round, the City funds services throughout Toronto for people who are homeless, including emergency shelters, drop-in centres, 24-hour street respite, housing help, and 24-hour street outreach and assistance to find and keep permanent housing.

Homeless people do not need to stay outside
While regular City services for homeless people focus on permanent housing, during an Extreme Cold Weather Alert, the attention of street outreach workers turns to convincing people to come inside. They provide transportation to shelters or overnight respite.

An alert is called, typically in the morning, when Environment Canada:

• predicts a temperature of -15 degrees Celsius or lower, without wind chill issues a wind chill warning for outdoor activity for people in the Toronto area, and/or
• predicts extreme weather conditions, such as a blizzard, ice storm or sudden drops in temperature.
  

• Increasing street outreach and transportation services. Throughout the day there is a minimum of one SUV on the road, and a minimum of three teams patrolling by foot. In the evening there are two SUVs and a minimum of one foot patrol. Overnight, there are two SUVs on the road. Focus is on informing clients about the danger of weather conditions and transporting them to indoor locations.
• Providing more transit tokens for those using drop-ins so people can reach shelters.
• Directing shelters to relax any service restrictions they may have.
• Contacting more than 100 organizations and agencies that work with homeless people throughout the city to ensure they can adequately prepare and respond to increased demand for services.
• Adding 172 shelter spaces.

List of drop-ins with TTC tokens during Extreme Cold Weather Alerts