38 Cowdy Street

Adelaide Street Shelter

Since 2023, the property at 38 Cowdy Street (Adelaide Street Shelter) has operated as an emergency shelter and has provided critically needed accommodations to people facing homelessness. The shelter beds and homelessness services provided by Lionhearts Inc. at this location remain much needed in the community and when the shelter operations wind down and eventually cease, the beds and services provided at this site will need to be accommodated elsewhere in the community.

Shelter Operations

Currently, Adelaide Street Shelter has 55 shelter beds available each evening.

Adelaide Street Shelter offers coed shelter for adults over the age of 25, couples are welcome, and storage and meals are provided on site. The shelter currently operates 24 hours a day, 7 days per week. This includes access to washrooms, meals and scheduled programming and activities, including 3 computers. Initially these day services were only offered on weekends and statutory holidays, but were expanded on May 2, 2025 to include daily on-site supports with a focus on Prevention Diversion, Street Outreach and Day Services programming such as independent living skills.

Wind Down and Relocation of Services

The City has acquired property to facilitate to wind down shelter operations at 38 Cowdy Street.

The first site the City has acquired for this purpose is 924 Sydenham Road. When emergency shelter services open at this new location, the shelter beds offered at 38 Cowdy site will be reduced by approximately half.

On Sept. 7, Council delegated authority to staff to execute and submit conditional offers for the purchase of single detached dwelling units to be used to advance the acquisition of supportive housing properties. These purchases

This approach would ensure that the City can efficiently move forward purchases of single detached homes that can then be transitioned quickly to provide supportive housing services for individuals with low to medium acuity levels. These supportive housing units will target those individuals that have been residing within shelters for an extended period and that are typically ready to move through the housing continuum but have been unable to do so, due to a lack of supportive housing opportunities. These supportive housing units will not serve people with high acuity that are typically sheltering in encampments, but will create capacity in the shelter system, without adding new shelter locations and beds.

Operations and Wind Down Engagement

The City is committed to providing ongoing updates, receiving questions, and guiding a constructive community-led engagement process to the neighbourhood around Adelaide Street Shelter. The intent is to ensure clear and consistent communication with the community about the shelter services currently offered at the site and the steps being taken toward winding down these operations and fully closing shelter services at 38 Cowdy Street.

Upcoming community meeting dates are posted on the right side of this page, under Key Dates. Questions about the current Adelaide Street Shelter operations or the wind down plan for the site can be shared using the question tool below. Staff will aggregate questions by theme and respond through the frequently asked questions section of this project page.

Meeting notes, presentations, council reports and news releases will be shared through the links and related documents section of this project page.