Climbing the mountain to end homelessness while others pull you down

Working to end homelessness can feel like climbing a very tall mountain. Sometimes the top looks a long way off. We can get there, but we need to keep at it and stay on the right path.  

The City of Toronto is climbing. But the province of Ontario is pulling it down with misguided policies that exacerbate poverty and put stable, dignified homes out of reach. 

Ontario invests less in low-income housing than it did a decade ago, even though the number of people who are chronically homeless doubled between 2022 and 2024. Its long-term freeze on social assistance rates means that people receiving Ontario Works (OW) can no longer afford to rent even a room. The number of OW recipients who are unhoused has also doubled over the past three years. Since 2020, the province has had a “Poverty Reduction Strategy” that has no measurable targets for reducing poverty for people in Ontario. Unsurprisingly, that strategy has failed. 

As if that wasn’t enough, the province recently proposed ending month-to-month leases as part of a larger overhaul to the Landlord and Tenant Board. This would have effectively ended rent control and housing security for tenants. Although the government bowed to the swift public outcry on this point, Bill 60 still contains a number of provisions that will weaken tenant rights by changing the way the Landlord and Tenant Board works to tip more in the favour of landlords. If passed, these changes will lead to more people being evicted into homelessness. 

The City, meanwhile, is left to do what it can to help the people who bear the brunt of these provincial policies. It does not have all the tools or resources that other levels of governments have, but the City has been picking up and using the tools it does have. It introduced bylaws to prevent renovictions and to ensure that rooming houses meet minimum standards. Both of these Toronto-made bylaws strengthen tenant rights. The City moved forward with a Deputy Ombudsman, Housing, and a Housing Rights Advisory Committee (disclosure: I am the chair of this committee) to advise and monitor progress on the human right to housing, which it explicitly recognizes in its 10-year housing plan. These accountability structures can help keep the City on track. 

On the ground, facing a crisis in shelter space and a dire lack of funding, the City nevertheless managed to double the number of shelter beds between 2021 and 2024. It has been vocal in its call to the federal government to do its part to fund shelter spaces for refugees.  

Toronto’s current strategy to address homelessness involves opening 20 new shelters in neighbourhoods around the city, including outside the downtown core. Temporary shelters are not the solution to homelessness – for that, we need stable, affordable housing – but they are a critical emergency response. While the planned shelters are meeting the predictable resistance from some (as well as the unpredictable extreme of a lawsuit filed by one resident group in particular), the work to get them up and running is underway.  

This doesn’t happen without leadership. Deputy Mayor Amber Morley, for example, supports the opening of a shelter in her ward and has been working with people who are concerned about its implications for community safety. She is being sued for her efforts. And still, she continues to move the work on shelters forward.  

In contrast, others are actively trying to prevent progress. Some aim to delay the shelters by arguing that residents were not properly consulted on their location.  

It’s important to understand that the public consultations were not intended to focus on the location of the shelters. In 2017, Toronto’s city council delegated authority for choosing the sites of shelters to city staff in an effort to de-politicize the process. This, too, was a step in the right direction. Making sure that every person has emergency shelter is a minimum core obligation of all governments. Meeting this obligation is about governing, not about politics.  

People have opinions about what happens in their community, and they should be able to voice them. Including these voices is also a duty of governing, and the right to participate in public decision-making is fundamental. But that doesn’t mean that people have the power to deny other people their human rights. Residents of a neighbourhood do not have the legal or moral authority to exclude others from living there, or to prevent them from accessing their human right to housing.  

In its consultations, the City has to get the question right. The question is not: Do you want a shelter in your neighbourhood? The question is: How do we best meet people’s basic human right to shelter and the needs of other members of the community around them? 

We need to be careful that participation is not weaponized to prevent action nor used to score political points. We need to be impatient and keep pressing the City to act with urgency. 

We should also be vigilant about the forces that are outside a municipality’s control. Bill 60 is just the latest example that other orders of government are not taking their duty to protect the human right to housing seriously.

Ensuring every person in Toronto has a stable, decent home is a mountain we can climb if the City stays on the right path. When others are pulling us down, we need to counter those forces. We need to push forward and focus on the work that will help us climb faster and farther. People’s lives depend on it.