These pages share information about people experiencing homelessness who are entering and leaving the City of Toronto shelter system each month, including the number of unique people who have used the shelter system at least one time in the past three months and are considered to be actively experiencing homelessness.
The data will help the City and our community partners measure progress towards the vision of ensuring experiences with homelessness in Toronto are rare, brief, and non-recurring.
The indicators in this data provide a more comprehensive picture of people using the shelter system than traditional measures, such as the Daily Shelter Occupancy Reports, which focus on nightly occupancy and capacity.
This data is updated on a monthly schedule and can be found on our Open Data website.
The data for the Shelter System Flow dashboards are captured through an information management system used to operate shelters, 24-hour respite sites, and other allied services including warming centres that are funded by the City of Toronto. The data include people who have used one of those services in the past three months.
Over time, the data will be expanded to include more people, such as people sleeping outdoors and people using overnight homelessness services that are not funded by the City of Toronto, to provide more comprehensive picture of all people experiencing homelessness in Toronto. Based on the most recent Street Needs Assessment, we estimate that approximately 18 per cent of people experiencing absolute homelessness in Toronto are not currently reflected in this data.
Data for each month will be published on the 15th day of following month and will also be available on the Open Data portal.
The key data included in the dashboards are described below.
People who have used the shelter system at least one time in the past three months and did not move to permanent housing.
The data can be filtered by sub-populations including: Chronically Homeless, Families, Single Adult, Unaccompanied Youth, Refugees. More information about these sub- populations is available through Open Data portal.
Demographic information currently available in the data includes age and gender. Over time, the demographic information will be expanded to include racial identity, Indigenous identity, and veteran status.