Toronto homeless shelters occupancy levels & transit accessibility / : Toronto homeless shelters occupancy levels and transit accessibility

The goal of this research is to see how accessible homeless shelters are to public transit routes as most homeless individuals will be using public transit or walking to get to the shelters for the night. [...] Finally, with the recent deaths due to homeless individuals sleeping on the streets during extreme cold weather events, it is necessary to see what the occupancy levels can be at the shelters and if the issue is a shortage of beds or another unrelated issue. [...] As suspected, the high concentration of both homeless shelters and transit stops in the downtown core has resulted in a falsification of the data, making it appear as though all shelters are situated close to transit stops. [...] Looking at the map and at the data, we can clearly see that the amount of time spent walking in the periphery of Toronto is much greater than what individuals living in the downtown core would experience. [...] In terms of importance, the “shelters” shapefile proved to be the most useful considering the amount of data it contained in the attribute table.