Meed Ward: Our cities are struggling to keep up. It's time for urgent action to combat the homelessness crisis
We need to scale up and roll out complete solutions across the province, the chair of Ontario's Big City Mayors says.
There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding across Ontario in cities both large and small, urban and rural. We need urgent action with all levels of government, community partners and others working together to find solutions.
A toxic combination of dangerous drugs, inadequate mental-health supports, increased cost-of-living and a lack of housing options for people in vulnerable situations has left municipalities, big and small, with crisis levels of homelessness, mental health and addiction issues.
Public spaces no longer feel safe with reports of unprovoked attacks in parks, and drug paraphernalia left in plain sight. Firefighters, paramedics and police are spending more and more time on calls for citizens in mental health crises or who have overdosed — impacting response times for other emergency situations.
No where has this been addressed more than at the recent Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference, where over 3,000 municipal employees and elected officials from Ontario’s 444 municipalities met to discuss shared issues, learn from experts in their fields, and share these concerns with provincial cabinet ministers and ministry staff.
Municipalities of all sizes have highlighted the effects of homeless encampments on downtown businesses. Patrons are increasingly hesitant to visit and local employees face significant challenges as well, finding themselves ill equipped to handle the complex mental health and addiction issues that spill into their workplaces.
Shelters are overloaded with a rising local unhoused population, and for some that pressure is multiplied by a growing number of refugee and asylum seekers who also have no where else go to.
Treatment facilities are full, with wait times of many months, and the supportive housing needed across the province — where an individual can access the mental health, addictions or other supports needed for their recovery journey — is woefully lacking.
Enough is enough. Municipal budgets, primarily funded by the property tax base, were never designed to deal with the provincial responsibilities of housing, mental health and addictions. Our cities are suffering just trying to keep up.
We need your help.
Ontario’s Big City Mayors (OBCM) — representing the province’s largest 29 municipalities — have spearheaded the “Solve the Crisis” campaign to spur immediate action.
We are creating a coalition of first responders, community partners, local businesses, municipalities, the private sector and the public. We are asking you, the reader, to join us and speak out about the impacts of this crisis. We have heard from over a thousand Ontarians so far about impacts to people, businesses, local community spaces and even pets. We need to hear from you, too.
Our campaign’s requests are clear and pragmatic.
Homelessness and its root causes fall into a complicated zone of provincial responsibility spread across 16 different ministries — including municipal affairs, community and social services, housing and health. That is why we are calling on the province to appoint a single ministry and minister to take charge of solving the crisis. The minister would immediately form a joint municipal-provincial task force with experts from the sector to develop and implement a Made-In-Ontario Action Plan that delivers long-term funding commitments for supports and resources to cities on the front lines.
At the AMO conference in August, I raised these concerns with cabinet ministers, MPPs and municipal delegates. I spoke about the “Solve the Crisis” campaign and the reasons behind its conception.
The response from municipalities across the province was overwhelming. Through the Eastern Ontario Wardens Caucus, the Western Ontario Wardens Caucus and Eastern Ontario Mayors Caucus, 230 municipalities publicly committed their support the first day of the conference, and since then many others have followed suit.
Now, you can make a difference. Watch our video and share on your social media. Write to or call your MPP, MP, the premier and key cabinet ministers to share details about how the crisis has impacted you, your neighbourhoods and businesses, and ask them to take action.
This call to action is not about shaming or blaming government. I told the entire provincial cabinet this at the Minister’s Forum on the last day of the conference. In front of thousands of delegates, I asked when they were gong to do more.
I acknowledged that they were the first to create a mental health and addictions portfolio within their cabinet. I recognized that an hour earlier, they had announced funding to support the creation of ten HART (Homeless and Addiction Recovery Treatment) Hubs for Ontario — a similar model to what OBCM has been calling on the government to consider as one step in our Health and Homelessness Strategy.
While a good start, it is not an action plan. It is not enough to Solve the Crisis.
But there is hope.
Municipalities are taking action and putting in place programs that work.
In Kingston, Mayor Bryan Paterson is leading the way with the Integrated Care Hub (ICH). It has intervened in 550 potential overdoses and 32 overdoses so far this year — saving lives and taxpayer money by avoiding EMS calls and emergency services.
In Toronto, the Homes First Society reported helping 530 unhoused people transition to permanent housing in 2023 alone.
And in London, OBCM vice-chair Mayor Josh Morgan and city council approved $2 million in funding for new supportive housing units at House of Hope. This initiative has led to a 74% reduction in ER visits during the same period, year-over-year.
London’s investment was combined with about $700,000 in provincial dollars — a perfect example of how these solutions can be successful when governments and community organizations work together.
Provincial funding to-date has been beneficial — but a funding announcement isn’t an action plan that can solve the crisis for all communities. We are grateful, but it’s a drop in the bucket. The HART Hubs are a good start, but we need more. We need to scale up and roll out complete solutions across the province, with support from start to finish for an individual’s recovery journey.
The numbers are growing. It’s time to act quickly.
In 2023, the province had more than 1,400 encampments. Tens of thousands of individuals are living on our streets. We know that these numbers will continue to rise without urgent action.
Together, we can use our voices to tell our representatives to act now on the homelessness crisis so communities across Ontario can recover and thrive again.
Marianne Meed Ward is the Mayor of the City of Burlington and Chair of Ontario’s Big City Mayors, a caucus that represents the province’s 29 largest municipalities and 70 per cent of all Ontarians.