The Exhibition Place respite centre will close early due to a World Cup licensing agreement
“The impact will be horrendous for people who are unhoused,” a city outreach worker told the Toronto Star
With a 250-person capacity, Exhibition Place’s Better Living Centre is one of the biggest respite centres in the city’s shelter network, offering homeless Torontonians a warm place to stay during what’s been a frigid winter with record-breaking snowfall.
Related: Toronto is about to have its coldest night in years
Toronto’s winter shelter season ends in mid-April, but the Toronto Star reports today that the Exhibition Place shelter will stop accepting admissions around the middle of this month, “due to pre-existing spring bookings for the site,” which has been licensed to the city for FIFA World Cup use as of April 1.
Exhibition Place’s sales and marketing director Hughena Walsh told the Star that “FIFA is not displacing the respite,” and explained that the location had been licensed for World Cup use since back in 2022. A city representative told the Star that alternate space will be offered.
The Star notes that the city’s emergency shelter system is at 98.5 per cent occupancy this month, with warming centres running over their capacity.
“The impact will be horrendous for people who are unhoused,” outreach worker Greg Cook told the Star. “There are temperatures that are below freezing well into March most years, sometimes even April.”
The FIFA World Cup will have its first Toronto match in June, at the nearby BMO Field.
Related: It turns out the province hasn’t confirmed $97 million in FIFA funding
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
