Toronto

Toronto is Canada's largest city, a sprawling, expensive, and often unforgiving place beneath its glossy skyline and diverse neighborhoods, where the gap between wealth and struggle is stark and growing. The average household income sits around $97,000 a year, but that number means little if you're sleeping outside or bouncing between shelters. The city's 2021 Street Needs Assessment counted at least 7,347 people experiencing homelessness, and outreach workers will tell you the real number today is higher, especially with the ongoing housing crisis pushing more people into encampments and shelters that are already full. Organizations like Fred Victor, The Salvation Army Toronto, and Native Women's Resource Centre of Toronto work hard every day to offer meals, shelter beds, and a bit of dignity to people who need it, and they know this city's hard edges better than most. Winters here are brutal and summers bring their own dangers, so layering, staying near transit routes, and knowing where warming or cooling centres open up can make a real difference. You are not invisible here, and you are not alone — people in this city are working every day to make sure you make it through, one night at a time.