Barbara Patrocinio

Reporter

Ontario’s Big City Mayors are seeking to put more pressure on the provincial and federal governments to help their communities deal with the “humanitarian crisis" of rising homelessness, encampments and addictions and mental health issues.

The mayors visited Queen's Park on Thursday to launch their "Solve the Crisis" campaign, which encourages residents to contact local MPPs to press them to do more to address homelessness and related problems

Among the mayors' demands, they want an exclusive ministry to tackle both homelessness and drug addiction, equipped with a task force to gather funds and develop a strategy to use them.

The Ontario’s Big City Mayors is made up of the mayors of cities in Ontario with populations of 100,000 or larger. Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, the group’s president, said that even though there has been some funding to target these issues, it has been “piecemeal” and not enough.

“We believe the government, not municipalities, must solve this crisis. Municipalities have been left to manage the crisis of homelessness, mental health, and addiction issues in their communities by themselves—far beyond what they are equipped to handle,” Ward said.

According to data from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO), 45 per cent of tenant households spend 30 per cent or more of their total income on shelter, which is the highest rate across the country.

The big city mayor's caucus operates out of AMO, which counts as members virtually every municipality in the province except Toronto. 

Colin Best, AMO's president, said that by 2025, approximately 160,000 households will spend more than 50 per cent of their income on rent, which increases the possibility of these people becoming homeless.

Food bank use in Ontario has also skyrocketed, with a 42 per cent increase over the past three years alone. 

One-third of these visitors were using food banks for the first time

says that “the problem has been pushed down to the municipal level, even though these issues are part of the province of Ontario’s mandate, fitting within their responsibilities for Municipal Affairs and Housing, Health (including Mental Health and Addictions), Children, Community and Social Services and a dozen more ministries.”

The wait list for government subsidized housing assistance in 2018 was 215,000 people. According to recent Canada Housing Renewal Association study, an additional 143,225 units of deeply affordable community housing is needed in Ontario by 2030 just to meet the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.

“There is a humanitarian crisis happening on our streets, people are dying and something needs to be done. The number of people who are unhoused, as well as those suffering with mental health and addictions issues, is growing at alarming rate, and municipalities cannot tackle this crisis alone. We need the province, along with all levels of government and  community partners, to implement the programs that have proven to be effective,” Ward said.

Most social housing stock in Ontario came from past federal and provincial investments, AMO said, mostly between the 1960s and 1990s. But provincial commitment was reduced in the 1990s, when the responsibility for social housing was transferred to municipalities.

“Ontario remains the only jurisdiction in Canada where social housing is a municipal responsibility,” said Best.

The mayors also said that approximately 30 to 35 per cent of those experiencing homelessness and up to 75 per cent of women experiencing homelessness struggle with mental illnesses,

The 2024 federal budget announced an additional $250 million in dedicated funding to address encampments with a call out to provinces and territories to match this investment, though Ontario hasn't done that yet, Ward said. He also said the feds need to do more just put up that one-time allotment. 

“A funding announcement is not an action plan. It helps the community that got that funding for the period of time, but it is not predictable and we can't count only on that,” she said.

The group says a provincial minister of a new standalone homelessness agency should set up a task force with broad sector representatives, including municipalities, healthcare, first responders, community services, the business community and the tourism industry to develop a “Made in Ontario Action Plan.”

The next step would be providing municipalities with the tools and resources to transition those in encampments to more appropriate supports and committing to funding the appropriate services required to address the crisis.

Some of the mayor's other demands are 24/7 community hubs and crisis centres to relieve pressure on emergency centres and first responders in these communities.

At last count, the campaign's website says that there were more than 1,400 encampments in Ontario. Dorothy McCabe, the mayor of Waterloo, said this number is probably much higher.

“Particularly for women and people who identify as women that there's a significant under-reporting of the numbers in that sector,” she said.

“A lot of them are, unfortunately, either unsafe in the shelter, so they're not coming there, so then they're not being counted, and there's also a lot of women who stay in abusive relationships, or who are couchsurfing or in different homelessness situations, that are somehow harder to count,” McCabe explained.

She added that homeless and drug addiction are heavily linked, since one issue might trigger the other.

“There are studies showing people who end up homeless and the addictions they can develop. There are so many people out there who don't have an addictions issue already, but they end up homeless for one reason or the other, and then develop addictions,” she said.

“A single mom had told us that she developed an addiction to meth because she had to stay up all night to guard her kids because she had no place safe to go,” McCabe added.

The federal parliamentary budget officer said 

that the funding is still insufficient to meet the target of reducing chronic homelessness by 50 per cent. To reach this goal, an additional investment of $3.5 billion a year across the country will be necessary, which is seven times the current funding level.

For Ward, this means that if a joint approach with the federal and provincial governments fail, the consequences will be hard on people.

More people will die on our streets unnecessarily, and people won't feel safe going to our parks. They won't feel safe going to our downtown business areas, and businesses will close. This is a serious problem,” she said.

The Housing Ministry said in statement that the government makes a $700 million annual investment "to grow and enhance community and supportive house," which represents a more than 40 per cent increase in funding, besides adding $396 million over three years for mental health and addictions services.

"We continue to call on the federal government to step up, pay their fair share and take more responsibility for the consequences of their policies that have escalated the number of individuals facing homelessness," the statement read.

Regarding the addiction part, the statement added that "the recent disastrous examples of British Columbia and other jurisdictions has shown decriminalization does not work." 

"Instead, it encourages dangerous behaviour in public spaces, victimizes innocent people and undermines law enforcement’s ability to protect our communities," it said.

"We continue to call on the federal government to step up, pay their fair share and take more responsibility for the consequences of their policies that have escalated the number of individuals facing homelessness."

The Ford government has already ruled out safe consumptions sites in Ontario, and this isn not among the requests the mayors asked this Thursday, neither was decriminalization.

Ward said the mayors’ group has been in contact with the premier and many ministries about the municipalities’ issue, and that although Mental Health and Addictions Minister Michael Tibollo has the title, he doesn't have the ministry support and the staff and the funding to deal with this hard task.

“We had a conversation a couple of days ago with Minister Tibollo. There are something like 16 different Ministries that touch this issue. So who's calling them all together, who's deploying the resources from those Ministries to develop a comprehensive action plan?” Ward said.

Ward said there is no indication from the government about their main request, which is the creation of a separate ministry to tackle the issue.

“I believe they're looking at what exists now, with Minister Tibollo. They're looking at what the ministries do and how they collaborate. I know, of course, the ministries talk to each other, but one ministry doesn't have the power to direct another. So unless the premier is going to take charge of this, he needs to appoint a single person who can do it,” she explained.

Michael Tibollo’s office didn’t reply by deadline to a request for comment.

Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie said that "too many people in our province are being left behind."

NDP Leader Marit Stiles, also released a statement saying that as premier, she will make sure that "provincial responsibilities are paid for by the province in a new partnership with cities, based on respect."

"Everyone deserves a roof over their head, and a safe place to sleep. No one should have to bury their loved one because they couldn't get the mental health and addictions support they needed," the statement read.

‘Solve the crisis’: Ontario mayors call for provincial and federal intervention on homelessness

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