January 9 2025 – The provincial and federal governments need to step up, said Karen Redman, who serves as chair of both Waterloo Region and the Mayors and Regional Chairs of Ontario.
“We’re encouraged that they’ve made a down payment on this issue recognizing that it is not nearly the amount of money that we need to solve chronic homelessness,” Redman said.
More than 80,000 people in Ontario were homeless last year, a new report from the province’s municipalities shows in what is the clearest picture of the issue to date.
And nearly half of those people have lived either in shelters or on the streets for more than six months, or experienced recurrent homelessness over the past three years, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario found in its report examining the human and financial cost of the province’s homelessness crisis.
The association, which represents 444 municipalities across Ontario, said a fundamentally different approach is needed to tackle the crisis, one that prioritizes long-term housing solutions rather than temporary measures or policing solutions.
Read the article: More than 80,000 people in Ontario were homeless in 2024, report finds – The Globe and Mail