Posted On: February, 26th, 2025, Posted By: Mike Adler, YorkRegion.com, Original Article.
Hidden from many York Region voters is a condition, homelessness, that will get rapidly worse unless the next provincial government takes steps to fix it, advocates say.
We’re at “a tipping point” in a crisis, says a report released last month by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
Last year, 81,515 Ontarians were known to be homeless, up 25 per cent from 2022 and by 2035, the number may double or could grow to 294,000 “under an economic downturn,” the report predicts.
What has become a more visible problem even in York — whose outreach workers visited 62 encampments in 2021 and 204 two years later — is not the municipality’s fault.
It’s Canada’s provinces that are responsible for social welfare, Jeff Schlemmer, executive director of the Community Legal Clinic of York Region said in an interview.
Rents in York climbed 100 per cent in the last eight years but fixed incomes for people receiving social assistance rose just 15 per cent, Schlemmer said.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives indexed the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) program to inflation but left recipients far below the poverty line.
Instead of increasing shelter allowances for Ontario Works and ODSP to help poor people stay in their rented apartments, “the cheapest thing this government might have done,” the Ford government watched many more people become homeless, Schlemmer added.
Hidden from many York Region voters is a condition, homelessness, that will get rapidly worse unless the next provincial government takes steps to fix it, advocates say.
We’re at “a tipping point” in a crisis, says a report released last month by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.
Last year, 81,515 Ontarians were known to be homeless, up 25 per cent from 2022 and by 2035, the number may double or could grow to 294,000 “under an economic downturn,” the report predicts.
What has become a more visible problem even in York — whose outreach workers visited 62 encampments in 2021 and 204 two years later — is not the municipality’s fault.
It’s Canada’s provinces that are responsible for social welfare, Jeff Schlemmer, executive director of the Community Legal Clinic of York Region said in an interview.
Rents in York climbed 100 per cent in the last eight years but fixed incomes for people receiving social assistance rose just 15 per cent, Schlemmer said.
Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives indexed the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) program to inflation but left recipients far below the poverty line.
Instead of increasing shelter allowances for Ontario Works and ODSP to help poor people stay in their rented apartments, “the cheapest thing this government might have done,” the Ford government watched many more people become homeless, Schlemmer added.
“There’s no sign of this changing. It’s just going to keep getting worse until it does change,” said Schlemmer, who argued the next provincial government needs a realistic business plan to get homeless people back into homes.
The AMO report calls for $11 billion in investments over a decade to build “a future where homelessness is rare, brief and nonrecurring.”
The PC Party did not provide a York Region candidate to interview but a campaign spokesperson said the party shares municipal leaders’ concerns about keeping communities safe.
“That is why we are using every tool we have to clear encampments and restore safety to public spaces while enhancing mental health support and keeping the most vulnerable members of our society safe and housed,” the statement said.
In York, the PCs are investing more than $36 million through the Homelessness Prevention Program in new transitional housing units to support people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, the statement added.
Michael Braithwaite, CEO of Blue Door, York’s largest emergency housing provider, said the province has invested new money but not enough.
“What we need are drastic measures,” Braithwaite said, advising people to ask candidates about their party’s long-term housing plans and push them on increasing income supports.
“How are we going to give people in encampments viable alternatives?”
People can forget people who are homeless are “fathers, mothers, aunts, cousins — these are humans at a time in their lives when they need help,” said Braithwaite.
Jason Cherniak, Liberal candidate in Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill and a lawyer said his party would offer universal mental health care, double ODSP and Ontario’s stock of supportive housing and establish an emergency fund to help renters avoid eviction.
All this would help reduce homelessness, he said.
Encampments, Cherniak said, are a tragedy arising from “a failure of government to help people who need help.”
People in this situation need to feel “supported and heard and not pushed around by the government,” he added in an interview.
Denis Heng, Newmarket-Aurora’s New Democratic candidate and a public health epidemiologist said homeless people “deserve the same respect as anyone else.”
Riding residents may naturally think about their own situation first, but they do care about ending chronic homelessness by addressing root causes, Heng said.
NDP plans to end homelessness include doubling OW and ODSP payments, more permanently affordable housing, including 60,000 new supportive housing units with mental health supports and restoring rent control.
What sets New Democrats apart is political will to do these things, Heng said.