Bradford is calling on the provincial government to invest billions of dollars to end homelessness.
Based on a motion from Ward 1 Coun. Cheraldean Duhaney, council voted Feb. 18 to endorse a report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) related to homelessness in Ontario.
The motion also calls on the provincial government to increase funding and take significant, long-term action on affordable housing, mental-health services, and income supports to address homelessness.
“Ontario’s homelessness crisis has deepened significantly,” warns AMO’s Jan. 9 report, titled Municipalities Under Pressure: The Growing Human and Financial Cost of Ontario’s Homelessness Crisis.
Duhaney was elected to the board for AMO as part of the small urban caucus on Aug. 20, during the association’s annual conference in Ottawa.
In reading from the motion, she said “systemic gaps in homelessness prevention and supports are a direct reflection of inadequate or misdirected funding.”
Ward 6 Coun. Nickolas Harper took issue with the idea of income supports, and instead wanted to see those funds invested in job creation, because otherwise “people will just ride the gravy trains more.”
Ward 4 Coun. Joseph Giordano criticized the motion’s suggestion that anyone can “fix” homelessness completely, because “it’s never gone away in the history of human kind.”
Duhaney acknowledged homelessness and other related issues are ongoing but disagreed with changing the motion.
“For me, there’s really nothing to change because we want to fix it and I believe that we can,” she said.
The motion highlighted some of the report’s key findings, including that 81,515 people were estimated to have experienced homelessness in Ontario in 2024, a 25-per-cent increase since 2022.
Of those, 41,512 people were estimated to have experienced prolonged or repeated (chronic) homelessness, a number which has tripled since 2016.
The report identified issues beyond just affordable housing, reflecting “deep gaps” in income security, mental-health care, social welfare, education and justice systems.
At the same time, the report found a “significant shift” with municipalities increasingly taking on a larger share of costs, particularly for housing programs.
If the province were to dedicate about $2 billion, the report found it could prevent and resolve homeless encampments within about eight years. A further investment of $11 billion to boost the supply of supportive, transitional and community housing and increase prevention programs over the next 10 years could end chronic homelessness in Ontario, according to the report.
Otherwise, without “significant” intervention, AMO warns homelessness in Ontario could double in the next decade, and reach nearly 300,000 people in an economic downturn.
By bringing together nearly all 444 municipalities in Ontario, AMO works to promote and support municipal government while providing a channel of communication with the provincial government.