A couple of months after Ontario municipalities announced at their annual get-together that homelessness is their most pressing issue, Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra said the province soon plans to take greater action to address it.
At an unrelated news conference on Monday, Calandra didn’t elaborate much on what efforts the province may have planned aside from saying they’ll address the issue “in a much bigger way (and) in a much more focused way.”
While homelessness is a difficult issue to track consistently, data that is available portrays a dire and worsening crisis in Ontario.
Shelters in the province have room for about 20,000 people and are full, or close to it, on any given night, according to provincial data.
From June 2022 to July 2024, the total number of recipients of the province’s two main social support programs who were homeless during the month they received the payments nearly doubled, rising from 14,436 to 26,553.
In 2023, there were “at least 1,400 homeless encampments,” where a few to over 100 people resided, in communities across the province, according to a survey conducted by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).
AMO advocates for Ontario’s 444 municipalities. Each year, it hosts a conference attended by most provincial politicians, including the premier and his cabinet. Before this year’s event, in September, it and many of its member municipalities expressed that homelessness was the number 1 issue communities across Ontario wanted more help from the province to address.
None of the main promises Ford or members of his cabinet made at the 2024 AMO conference ultimately focused on homelessness.
"We're working very closely with our municipal partners to deal very specifically with some of the (homelessness) challenges that they are facing,” Calandra said on Monday at an unrelated news conference. “We’re working with AMO (and) with the big city mayors on this and there will be more coming, not only in the (fall economic statement) but over the next couple of months.”
Governments typically utilize the fall economic statement as a mini-budget, coupling announcements of new initiatives or programs with it. Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy will table this year’s on Oct. 30.
Brian Rosborough, AMO’s executive director, told The Trillium on Monday that the organization’s advocacy to the province on the topic of homelessness has kept up since its conference and will continue.
Rosborough said AMO’s desire is for the provincial government to work with it on addressing the “systemic problems” that have contributed to the mounting homelessness crisis to “map out how we move forward for social and economic prosperity in Ontario.”
“That’s a complex and detailed conversation that will take a while — if they commit to doing it — and they haven't done that yet,” Rosborough said.
In the province’s upcoming fall economic statement, however, Rosborough explained that AMO would view a number of possible steps as positive.
“More supportive housing, more investment in public housing and social housing, and supports in the Ministry of Health … (and) more investment by the province in treatment and services for addiction and mental health” would all be “helpful,” Rosborough said.
