Homeless Shelter Use by Age and Community with Implications for the Cost of Maintaining City-Wide Systems of Emergency Shelters: A Comparison of Calgary and Toronto.

This article examines patterns and costs of emergency homeless shelter use in two Canadian cities, Calgary and Toronto, using administrative data from 2011 to 2016. It identifies three distinct shelter use typologies—transitional (short, infrequent stays), episodic (frequent, short stays), and chronic (long stays)—and demonstrates that the experience of sheltered homelessness varies significantly by age group (youth aged 18–24 and adults 25+) and by community. The study finds that these variations lead to substantial differences in the cost of maintaining shelter systems, with transitional users incurring much lower costs than chronic users, and costs generally higher in Toronto than Calgary. It also quantifies potential cost savings for shelter operators from successfully housing formerly chronically homeless individuals, highlighting that eliminating chronic homelessness (achieving "functional zero") could reduce shelter system variable costs by approximately 75 percent in both cities. The findings underscore the importance of age- and community-specific approaches to homelessness policy and shelter system planning.