The tents in city parks, men and women gathered under Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, lean-tos and sleeping bags scattered through ravines, camp fires among the alder trees near the beaches — none of this is new to Toronto. But it has become a lot more visible since COVID came to town.

While most Torontonians are following public health orders to stay home, many of the city’s homeless are still trying to find one. 

A recent report shows that the Good Shepherd’s Youth Reconnect (YR) program has reduced the number of at-risk Hamilton, Ont., youth accessing shelter and other emergency services.

VATICAN CITY -- As the Vatican health service continued vaccinating Vatican residents and employees against COVID-19, it also began offering the vaccine to homeless people who live in Vatican-owned shelters.

The journey home has gotten a little easier for some of Toronto’s 8,500 homeless people in shelters and out on the street any given night.

When COVID-19 forced frontline workers to shift their support for homeless youth online, the result was more loneliness, more depression, more drug use, more overdoses and more thoughts of suicide, according to new research from Covenant House, Canada’s largest shelter serving young people.

Homeless people waiting to learn whether they might have contracted COVID-19 are living in the Jesuit retreat house in Guelph.

Doctors and homeless advocates are demanding government action to address what they call an inadequate response to COVID-19 outbreaks among Toronto’s homeless.

It was a different time and a different crisis, but in the small village of Bronte, Ont., work was hard to come by in the early 1950s.

EDMONTON -- It started with Edmonton churches asking “How can we help?”

For the first time in its 30-year history, researchers have taken a serious look at who uses Toronto’s volunteer, informal, faithbased system of overnight shelters known as Out of the Cold.

Winter was settling in and it was a blustery, cold evening as I walked around the streets with Tracey, a survivor of the street who for 14 drug-addled years had called the alleys and drug dens of the downtown area “home.” 

WASHINGTON – While driving to work with his son, Eric Von Gay Sr. noticed a homeless man walk out of his tent to look for food in the grass. That's when Eric Gay Jr. got the idea to "keep what Father Bill started."

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Many couples spend thousands of dollars on their dream wedding. But what happens when you have to call it all off?

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – For many people, a warm meal is a way to come together, celebrate, and spend time with friends and family. For homeless people living on the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, it’s an experience that’s rare. But about 500 young people in the city are working to change that.