Toronto opens fourth warming centre as temperatures drop
Posted January 30, 2023 3:40 pm.
Last Updated January 30, 2023 6:49 pm.
The City of Toronto will open a fourth warming centre in the downtown core on Monday evening.
Cecil Community Centre near College Street and Spadina Avenue will offer space for 30 unhoused Torontonians to spend the night.
RELATED: Extreme cold weather alert issued in Toronto with frigid week ahead
“Everybody has pulled together with incredible speed to make this happen because we know it’s going to be bitterly cold,” said Coun. Dianne Saxe, who secured the fourth warming center for the city in her ward of University-Rosedale.
“I was really disappointed when I saw in November that the city only had two, or at the most three, warming centres… and the need is even greater now than it was before,” Saxe told CityNews.
The location brings the total number of indoor spots being offered at city-run warming centres to 142 — 75 of which are downtown.
Lorraine Lam, from the Shelter and Housing Justice Network, said it’s hardly enough to meet demand in a city where more than 10,000 people have no place to stay on any given night.
“These are really, really small steps, and I hope they count for something,” Lam told CityNews upon learning of the fourth location. “But until the [Toronto Board of Health] vote is acted on, people will still have nowhere to go. People are still going to be relying on coffee shops, and transit and malls, whatever places people can find to stay warm.”
Toronto Warming Centres:
Cecil Community Centre: 58 Cecil St.
Metro Hall: 55 John St.
Scarborough Civic Centre: 150 Borough Dr.
Mitchell Field Community Centre: 89 Church Ave., North York
Toronto’s Board of Health recently passed a motion urging the city to keep its warming centres open 24/7 until April 15. Currently, the city-run centres open at 7 p.m. after an extreme weather alert is declared and remain open for the next 24 hours only.
“Winter happens every year, and it feels like every year we’re having the same conversation,” Lam said.
The city has said that not all of its warming centres are capable of housing people overnight. The Board of Health’s suggestion for around-the-clock relief won’t be heard by council for a couple more weeks.
The motion also calls on councillors to declare a crisis “based on the systemic failure of all three levels of government to provide adequate 24-hour respite spaces.”
The Better Living Centre at Exhibition Place, which provided space last year, is no longer used.
