It’s been nearly four months since the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) released its Municipalities Under Pressure report, which they called the most ambitious study of homelessness ever conducted across Ontario.
This week at the 2025 Ontario Small Urban Municipalities conference in Collingwood, senior AMO staff provided an update to the 260 municipal attendees on the work they’ve done since the 200-page report’s release to make sure it turns into provincial action.
“We cannot crisis-manage our way out of this crisis,” said Alicia Neufeld, senior manager of AMO policy. “It’s clear the world has fundamentally changed since we released this paper.”
The information included in the report was based on data from the province’s 47 service managers, who help manage homelessness, provided to AMO.
The report found that in 2024, 81,515 people experienced homelessness in Ontario.
“We know there’s a whole bunch more than that, that aren’t known,” said Neufeld. “There are people who aren’t interacting with municipal services, or the hidden homeless who maybe are couch surfing. There are Indigenous Ontarians who don’t interact with services for a whole bunch of historical reasons.”
“It’s a conservative number,” she said.
In total, the study found that 25 per cent more people experienced homelessness in Ontario in 2024 than had in 2022.
On average, homelessness has increased by about 51 per cent in Ontario communities since 2016, and chronic homelessness has more than tripled.
In 2024, 268,241 households were on Ontario’s wait-list for rent-geared-to-income (RGI) housing, which is equivalent to one in 20 households in Ontario.
Between 2016 and 2024, the estimated funding for housing and homelessness more than doubled, increasing from $1.9 billion to $4.1 billion, however municipalities are finding themselves shouldering a larger share of the overall financial burden, particularly for housing programs. Municipal contributions accounted for 51.5 per cent of that amount.
“We know that’s not sustainable. Municipal property taxes cannot absorb these kind of year-over-year increases,” said Neufeld.
According to the report’s projections, without significant intervention, homelessness in Ontario could more than triple by 2035, leaving up to 294,266 people without stable housing.
The report recommends a modelling scenario to push Ontario to achieve functional zero homelessness, which is estimated to cost $11 billion over 10 years. The report also contemplates a scenario that would cost $2 billion, which would create 5,700 new housing and support spaces to get people out of encampments quickly.
“No matter the economic scenario – homelessness in this province will continue to grow,” said Neufeld. “We’re at a tipping point in this crisis. We need to do something now before we tip off that cliff and we get to a place where it’s too hard to address.”
Neufeld said AMO released its 2025 pre-budget submission in January 2025 before the provincial and federal elections and the Trump inauguration. The submission called on the province to include more infrastructure funding for housing/the economy, reduce the provincial reliance on municipal subsidies and fixing broken provincial systems.
Neufeld also said AMO has had the opportunity to brief about 50 staff of the ministry of municipal affairs and housing on the report, however she also said that this was before the provincial election so AMO would continue to work on the education side with the ministry now that the new government is back in session.
At the end of April, AMO updated the submission to the province that continued the work through the new economic context.
AMO is calling for a stimulus investment of $3.45 billion annually over five years, including $790 million per year in social housing for new capital development, capital repairs to existing stock and acquisition and rehabilitation of existing buildings to protect Ontario.
“There’s a huge capital repair backlog,” said Neufeld. “AMO is going to continue pushing this forward. This issue is too important to all of our communities, businesses and residents to lose sight of it.”
At the end of presentation, she said AMO would soon be turning its attention to the state of health care sector with a similar study to come.
During remarks from attendees, Collingwood Coun. Deb Doherty didn’t mince words on the report and the priorities of the provincial government.
“Finally, we have an actionable, meaningful path forward,” she said. “Every time I think about $11 billion over 10 years to resolve the homelessness crisis...I consider that the budget for Hwy. 413 is $10 billion. I will leave it at that.”
