As crisis deepens Big City mayors pressure PC government to create new ministry to address homelessness 

Mayors across Ontario dealing with residents divided over the reality of temporary encampments mushrooming across municipalities, say the approach has been all wrong. 

They are demanding the creation of a new provincial ministry with dedicated funding for solutions to prevent increasing homelessness in Ontario’s largest cities.

Municipalities do not have revenue generating tools to raise the billions of dollars needed to confront the rapidly growing problem and have stressed that Queen’s Park and Ottawa have to dramatically expand programs to confront homelessness. Peel Region alone has predicted it will need at least $68 million in 2024 to fund adequate overflow emergency shelter space, after elected officials only budgeted $4 million for hotel space at the start of last year. The costs to create new subsidized housing and repair existing units will run into the billions, which regional staff have repeatedly said simply cannot be supported by the property tax base. The $4 million budgeted in 2023 for emergency shelter space was not even one sixth of what was actually needed—the final bill for hotel and motel spaces came in at just under $27 million. It was a failure at the hands of elected officials at Peel Region who chose to spend far more on things like policing, instead of the upstream solutions that can prevent chronic homelessness and all the subsequent problems it creates. It was also a failure of Ottawa and Queen’s Park, which downloaded subsidized housing onto municipalities in the ‘90s without providing any revenue tools to fund the massive cost, while offering a fraction of the funding that cities have required.

The result, alongside other financial pressures on local governments and residents, such as recent hyperinflation, stagnant wages and higher interest rates, has been a proliferation of makeshift housing arrangements.

In 2022, the Region of Peel reported 125 known tent encampments. In 2023, the number jumped to 258 (all but three were in Mississauga and Brampton). In 2023, municipalities across Ontario reported at least 1,400 homeless encampments, according to numbers released in July from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.

Thunder Bay

(Katie Nicholls, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

Brampton

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer Files)

Simcoe

(J.P. Antonacci, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

Chatham-Kent

(Pam Wright, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

Kingston

(Owen Fullerton, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)

Thornhill

(Scarlett Liu, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter)
 

"While municipalities did not create the homelessness crisis, they are being forced to manage it without the resources or tools to sufficiently respond," the Association explained. "Municipalities are often caught balancing the important needs of unsheltered people living in encampments, who deserve to be treated with empathy and respect, and a responsibility to ensure our communities are safe and vibrant places for all residents."

Data from The Canadian Observatory on Homelessness also revealed approximately 35,000 Canadians are homeless on a given night and at least 235,000 Canadians experience homelessness in a given year. 

To increase their ability to respond to the growing crisis, Ontario’s Big City Mayors (OBCM) is calling on all levels of government to take immediate action to address the mounting crisis and respond to the rise in mental health and addictions issues behind many cases of homelessness. 

Last week, OBCM launched the ‘Solve the Crisis’ campaign which outlined several requests previously approved by the organization, including that the provincial government create a designated ministry “with the appropriate funding and powers as a single point of contact to address the full spectrum of housing needs as well as mental health, addictions and wrap-around supports.”

Other asks include: having the designated minister establish a task force with broad sector representatives including municipalities, healthcare providers, first responders, community services and other stakeholders to develop a “Made in Ontario Action Plan”; provide municipalities with the tools and resources to transition individuals living in encampments to more appropriate supports; commit to funding the appropriate services on a community-by-community basis where there are unique gaps in local systems; and invest in 24/7 community hubs and crisis centres to relieve pressure on emergency first responders.

“There is a humanitarian crisis happening on our streets, people are dying and something needs to be done,” Marianne Meed Ward, chair of OBCM and Mayor of Burlington, said in a press release on the campaign’s launch. “The number of people who are unhoused, as well as those suffering with mental health and addictions issues, is growing at an alarming rate, and municipalities cannot tackle this crisis alone. We need the province, along with all levels of government and community partners, to implement the programs that have proven to be effective.” 

“This cannot wait, we must work together to solve this crisis now.”

The mayors of Ontario’s largest municipalities are calling on the Province to establish a designated ministry to address homelessness.

(Government of Ontario)

The requests made in the campaign are a reiteration of a motion approved by OBCM in June that called on the province to officially make homelessness a health priority and acknowledge the humanitarian crisis that Ontario is facing as the numbers of unhoused individuals and those suffering from mental health and addictions “grows exponentially.”

It stated that “although the province has provided additional funding for mental health, addictions and homelessness programs, the funding does not adequately address the ongoing crisis and financial and social impact on municipalities across the province.” It added, “there is no provincial lead focused on this crisis leading to unanswered questions, and a lack of support to manage the increasing needs of those who are unhoused.”

Meanwhile, as the homelessness crisis persists, Peel’s shelter systems are operating at 167 percent occupancy (143 percent of which account for Peel’s local homelessness and the remaining 25 percent asylum claimants), according to latest numbers from a Region of Peel spokesperson. They could not provide details on how many encampments are currently in Peel but said the Region is in the “midst of a deep analysis of Peel’s encampments and how to best respond to them.” The findings of the analysis will be presented to the Region when council reconvenes in the fall.  

Historically poor funding decisions and lack of adequate policy have manifested the crisis into what it is today. What previously cost the Region $2.5 million for overflow hotel space in just a few years ago has now exploded into an estimated $42 million to $68 million by the end of this year — amounts that are currently budgeted for at the Region despite the growing severity. Despite previous warnings that the shelter system can no longer operate beyond capacity and advocates sounding alarm bells that the current solution is not sustainable, elected officials at the Region have continued to ignore their responsibility to pour adequate funding into Peel’s overburdened shelter system. 

As Peel’s shelter systems continue to operate beyond what they can bear, Michelle Bilek, founder of Peel Alliance to End Homelessness (PAEH), says she is encouraged by the latest advocacy efforts from OBCM. 

“It's about time that municipalities took that next step with respect to advocacy campaigns,” she explained. “Campaigns usually are not something that municipalities do, but I think that in crisis situations like this, it's good to see them take the next step. So I'm encouraged by it… and hopefully, we'll hear more about whether or not it's actually going to have an impact.”

“I think the idea around a specific minister or an associate minister under the Minister of Housing would be appropriate to deal with homelessness issue,” she added. “I think it's much needed and overdue.”

Although municipalities, such as the Region of Peel, have been working to tackle the issue by funding various strategies and searching for innovative solutions to get people off the streets, the number of people in need of their services continues to rise and these band-aid solutions are no longer enough to meet the demand. 

“This is the top, I think, issue that most municipalities are dealing with at this conjuncture in time,” Bilek explained. “All program service delivery and building of affordable housing has all been downloaded over the years to the municipalities. They obviously don't have any sort of financial means to provide the wraparound services as well as the development of housing, so what do you do?”

As the Region of Peel began to see unprecedented numbers of individuals seeking refuge in its shelter system, overflow hotels saw large numbers of people waiting for a spot to become available.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer Files) 

Earlier this year, in an effort to address the spike in individuals seeking a roof over their heads as Peel was seeing record-breaking numbers in its emergency shelter spaces, the Region made progress to reduce the pressures on its system by securing temporary facilities to provide additional shelter space as well as implementing dormitory-style housing to alleviate the strain that has been placed on the Region’s resources over the last year. Previous numbers from the Region, during what seemed to be the breaking point, reported Peel’s emergency shelter systems were operating at nearly 400 percent occupancy at the beginning of this year, a drastic increase from the already alarming 321 percent reported in the final months of 2023. During the time there were approximately 128 known encampments where people were sheltering across Peel, a 167 percent increase from 2022.

Prior to numbers even coming close to these levels, in 2022 OCBM called on the province for an emergency meeting to address the chronic homelessness, mental health, safety and addictions crisis that was overwhelming communities across Ontario. Increasing its efforts, in February 2023 the organization adopted its own Health and Homelessness Strategy to provide the Province with some guidance and solutions on how they could work with municipalities to tackle this crisis.

“Our government takes housing affordability seriously,” a spokesperson from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing told The Pointer in an email, pointing towards some of the latest investments made by the Province into shelter supports including new deals from the cities of Toronto and Ottawa totalling $240 million for shelter and homelessness supports. Last September the Province announced it would allocate Toronto $26.4 million to provide urgent assistance to asylum-seekers as part of a $42 million federal fund to support communities across the province under the Canada Ontario Housing Benefit program. Of the $42 million announced, the province said Peel Region would receive $2.1 million — an amount that fell far short of even being able to cover the Region’s expenses four years ago.   

And once again, in classic political style of pointing the finger to deflect their own failures, the spokesperson said the Ministry will be continuing to call on the federal government “to step up, pay their fair share and take more responsibility for the consequences of their policies that have escalated the number of individuals facing homelessness.” The statement came despite several efforts from the federal government earlier this year to allocate funding to municipalities across Canada under its Interim Housing Assistance Program, previously meant to be a temporary funding stream that has now been used in recent years as a more permanent solution to address municipalities financial needs when it comes to responding to their sheltering needs. 

Although the Association of Municipalities of Ontario commends the federal government for putting more investments into addressing homelessness such as the 2018 National Housing Strategy, the 2019 Reaching Home Initiative, and more recently the 2024 Canada’s Housing Plan, the Association points out that the federal Parliamentary Budget Officer has determined that while planned spending on homelessness programs amounts to roughly $561 million per year, the funding is still insufficient to meet the target of reducing chronic homelessness by 50 percent and additional investments of $3.5 billion a year will be required across Canada — seven times the current funding level. 

But there are better ways to solve the current issue rather than pouring more funding into shelters, which were meant to be a permanent solution to the housing crisis, as Bilek points out. 

“Every time I go to a regional meeting or a municipal meeting and this topic comes up, our elected officials say, ‘well, we don't want to see unhoused people sleeping outside, sleeping rough, so let's build more shelters,’ we know that that's not the solution,” she explained. “Shelters are supposed to be temporary emergency services and an on-ramp to reestablishing wellness and a person's ability to access affordable, appropriate housing for themselves.”

“But now we're seeing people basically institutionalized in shelters. It's not the way to go either.”

Despite the political antics currently at play, Bilk said she is pleased to see stronger advocacy efforts at the municipal level, adding that PAEH and other organizations in the non-profit sector that support people experiencing homelessness are supporting the initiative and will optimistically be waiting for something tangible to come out of it.  

“It's come to the point where the sector is bleeding. They’re bleeding dry,” she stressed, adding that having a specific point of contact through a designated ministry to collaborate with and discuss how to build “sustainable, affordable, accessible and appropriate housing” for people, while ensuring the wraparound services and funding to support them are there, is critical to addressing the current crisis overwhelming communities across the province. 

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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