The Association of Municipalities of Ontario report on homelessness released yesterday should serve as a "stark warning," according to a Collingwood housing advocate.
On Jan. 9, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario released their ‘Municipalities Under Pressure’ report, which they’ve called the most ambitious study of homelessness ever conducted across Ontario. It found that in 2024, 81,515 people experienced homelessness in Ontario
According to front-line agencies in Simcoe County, the first-of-its-kind report brings better data into the ongoing conversation of homelessness in Ontario.
Collingwood housing advocate and member of the town’s affordable housing task force Marg Scheben-Edey applauded the deep dive on the issue.
“The result is a stark warning to all of us that the problems are enormous, they are growing and cannot be tamed without heavy investments at all levels of government,” she said in an email. “It validates, yet again, that the only real path out of the homelessness crisis is to build supportive housing and to invest in the creation of permanent affordable housing.”
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 County of Simcoe is the service provider for homelessness and housing services across Simcoe County.
“For homelessness, it’s never been a great data space, so it’s good on AMO and others to come together to really do a deep dive,” said Mina Fayez-Bahgat, general manager of social and community services for the county.
The county has pushed forward on an open-data strategy on housing and homelessness over the past few years through open.simcoe.ca, a data portal that shows a snapshot in time on local shelter utilization, shelter system flow and affordable housing indicators.
Fayez-Bahgat said that made it easy when AMO came knocking looking for local information.
“For us, it wasn’t shocking because we’ve been at these tables and working on this issue from a data perspective for many years now,” he said. “But, it’s obviously concerning because numbers are going in the wrong direction.”
AMO found that more than half of people in Ontario who experienced homelessness last year did so chronically — meaning they were without somewhere to live for prolonged or repeated periods.
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 50 per cent in Ontario communities since 2016. The group highlighted, however, that rural and northern Ontario communities have experienced significantly sharper rises in homelessness. Compared to eight years earlier, there were 150 per cent more homeless people in rural communities and more than 200 per cent more homeless people in northern Ontario.
The report shows that known homelessness in Ontario has gone up by 51 per cent since 2016, and chronic homelessness has more than tripled.
“This is significant, because it shows people are not able to move through our shelter system back into housing quickly, and this is in large part because there isn't enough affordable supportive housing to meet the need,” said Jennifer van Gennip, director of communications and advocacy with Redwood Park Communities in Barrie and co-chair of the Ontario Alliance to End Homelessness, in an email.
“The experience of homelessness is very traumatic, and the longer people spend homeless, the more supports they need to recover,” she said.
Fayez-Bahgat said the county’s numbers haven’t increased as much as the provincial number – comparing 2022 to 2024, he said homelessness in Simcoe County has only increased by 10 per cent, while chronic homelessness has gone up 23 per cent.
“While our (numbers) are lower, they’re obviously still increasing, which is still a problem and concern for us,” he said.
The report highlights the issue of shelter capacity as being one that prevents people from coming out of homelessness. Of the 27,138 spaces intended for people who are housing insecure across Ontario, 65.2 per cent of people are in the emergency shelter system, while 13 per cent are in transitional housing and 21.6 per cent are in supportive housing.
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.
Grey County is experiencing similar trends. In Grey, a point-in-time count in 2024 revealed 375 individuals experiencing homelessness in Grey County, with 253 of them chronically homeless.
The housing waitlist in Grey County has grown from 1,517 households in 2022 to 2,230 in 2024.
“Ontario’s homelessness crisis is significant, but it is not unresolvable,” notes a media release sent out on Friday by Grey County. “With the right investments and continued collaboration, the province can build a system that ensures every Ontarian has a place to call home, strengthening the resilience and well-being of communities for generations to come.”
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.
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.
“In housing, municipalities have increasingly stepped in to address mounting pressures,” notes the report. “Those contributions have been essential...however, the scale of the issue—and the infrastructure required to solve it—extends far beyond what municipalities alone can sustainably fund.”
The report recommends a modelling scenario to push Ontario to achieve functional zero homelessness, which is estimated to cost $11 billion over 10 years.
Under the model, 75,050 new housing and support spaces would be created to house people permanently.
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.
“You need a perfect confluence of events – an increase in funding, you need to know your data...and you need to have all the willing partners (municipalities, community agencies and provincial/federal support) to shore up the services to create the housing in the right way,” said Fayez-Bahgat. “Whatever funding we receive from any level of government, we’re ready to go.”
Sara Peddle, executive director of the David Busby Centre both Barrie and South Georgian Bay chapters, said it was good to see that “an army of people in cities across Ontario” contributed to the report.
“It’s good to see that municipalities are aligned with what we’ve been advocating for on the front line of this crisis for many years,” she said in an interview. “There needs to be a balanced approach of emergency supports, transitional and supportive housing.”
“We’re not surprised by the increase in numbers. We are feeling it at the front-line level. People are suffering right now and there’s not a lot of outflow to housing. It’s heartbreaking to watch,” she said.
Peddle said it is, however, reassuring that so much work went into creating the report.
“Homelessness isn’t going away tomorrow,” said Peddle. “As a society, we have spent years creating this crisis. Now, it’s going to take years, thoughtfulness and authentic conversation to get out of that.”
- With files from Charlie Pinkerton
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