The City is in the process of developing its next multi-year Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness to guide how the City, partners and other orders of government work together to better support people experiencing homelessness. The plan will focus on measures that:
The Strategic Plan is intended to support a coordinated, person-centred and outcome-focused approach to addressing homelessness across Toronto’s homelessness services system.
Toronto Shelter and Support Services is the City’s shelter system manager, directly operating and funding community agencies that deliver:
The Division’s priority is to ensure people experiencing homelessness have access to temporary accommodation when they need it, along with housing-focused and wrap-around supports to help ensure homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring. To do that, the Division works closely with community partners and stakeholders to deliver services that help improve overall well-being and support pathways to housing.
The Strategic Plan will take a multi-divisional and sector-wide approach, propose major initiatives with defined outcomes, and provide a multi-year blueprint to guide strategic decision-making and investments related to homelessness. The Plan will be designed to be adaptive and responsive to evolving needs.
Solutions to homelessness require an all-of-government, multi-sectoral, and community-wide approach. To inform the development of the Strategic Plan, the City has engaged a wide range of audiences, including City staff from multiple divisions, homelessness service providers, sector and intersectoral partners, Indigenous partners, and other key stakeholders, including people with lived experience of homelessness.
The first phase of the engagement process was led by an external consultant and included input from nearly 600 participants, gathered through in-person and virtual engagement sessions as well as a survey. Findings from this work have been summarized in the Stakeholder Engagement Report Executive Summary. For more details, read the full Stakeholder Engagement Report.
As development work continues, the City has extended the release of the Strategic Plan to 2027. This timing will allow for deeper coordination with key partners who will play a role in delivering on the Plan’s commitments and priorities.
While the Strategic Plan is being finalized, the City continues to advance key initiatives and improvements across the homelessness services system to respond to urgent and emerging needs.
The Strategic Plan to Address Homelessness will align with the HousingTO 2020-2030 Action Plan and the Homelessness Services Capital Infrastructure Strategy 2024-2033. It will also build upon the previous Service Plan: