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Homelessness, once considered an urban problem, is now a crisis spread across the provincial map — and one that has picked up momentum at a dizzying speed since Ontario’s last election. A landmark report released in January by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario showed that between 2022 and 2024, the province’s known homeless population shot up by 25 per cent to a whopping 81,515 people. That pressure has been obvious in Toronto, where the known homeless population has shot up by more than 1,700 people since early 2022, and hundreds more tents and makeshift camps have arisen. 

This problem has been building for decades, and is far from specific to Ontario: homelessness is surging across Canada and in major cities worldwide. The biggest driver, experts roundly agree, is limited access to affordable housing, including units with embedded mental health services for those who need more supports. In Toronto, more than 100,000 households were waiting for subsidized homes as of December, versus around 80,500 at the time of Ontario’s last election.

But this crisis is deeply entwined with other problems, experts say, like social assistance payments that are well below the cost of living, and a mental health care system that comes with either protracted waits or prohibitive costs. Cities have also pointed increasingly to inadequate supports available to assist refugees and asylum-seekers, who flee violence and persecution overseas only to find themselves entangled in Canada’s housing crisis. 

In Toronto, more than 6,000 refugees were homeless as of January, a sharp increase from the 1,726 in January 2022 or even pre-pandemic highs in 2018. 

Experts have repeatedly called for a more robust, big-picture response to get this swelling crisis under control — one that provides unbroken, long-term funding and clear, shared targets between all three levels of government.

“Ontario is seeing kind of the perfect storm of bad news,” said Tim Richter, president of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, pointing to the economic rattle of the pandemic and looming tariff threats, an increasingly toxic street drug supply that ensnares people in addiction, and a constant gnawing away at affordability. “There has to be a shared recognition of the challenge, and willingness for each level of government to play its role.”

Since 2022, Ontario has earmarked more than $2 billion for homelessness responses, including a joint federal-provincial rent subsidy program that helps foot the difference between market rents and what a household can actually afford — as well as funds for operating costs at supportive housing sites.

But cities have cried out for more help. º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøhas pointed specifically to Ontario’s social assistance rates, arguing that despite some increases to Ontario Disability Support Program payments in recent years, the current rates pale against actual costs of living. In 2024, the maximum housing allowance a single person would receive through the disability program was $582 a month. On Ontario Works, it would be less, with rates flat for years.

“Since mid-2022, there were almost no exits from the shelter system without the support of a housing benefit or rent-geared-to-income housing,” º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøshelter department head Gord Tanner wrote in May, noting it took “significant additional financial supports” to help those on social assistance find homes. 

The discrepancy between household incomes and housing costs is the key chasm officials know they have to bridge to prevent people from falling into homelessness, as well as stop people from getting stuck in shelters chronically. But Ontario has also struggled to make strides in poverty reduction recently. 

Data delays make it difficult to measure progress since the last election; for example, the province’s latest poverty reduction report, released in 2024, only provides data up to 2021. More people were living in poverty that year than the preceding year, it said, although the pandemic made things more complicated, with emergency benefits boosting many households’ incomes. 

Still, amid a widely acknowledged affordability crisis, other groups have sounded the alarm. Campaign 2000, an advocacy coalition focused on reducing and preventing child poverty, warned last year that Ontario’s poverty rate among children was growing faster than ever, and quicker than in other provinces.

It’s a reality that puts more households at risk of losing the roofs over their heads. 

º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøphysician Andrew Boozary is the founding medical director of a supportive housing site in º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøthat received support from all three governments, and sees signs of progress in recent years. The pandemic seemed to add a sense of urgency to addressing homelessness, he said, one that resulted in new investments in sorely needed affordable housing. 

But he fears that urgency has started to wane. Boozary hopes to see officials keep their foot on the gas, especially as homelessness has worsened, squeezing hospitals and public systems while jeopardizing people’s health. 

“We need to see more resolve to the fact we can, actually, bend this trajectory to something that’s much better for everyone,” he said. “When we stray away from bold, collective action … this wicked problem only becomes more cruel.”