Premier Doug Ford likes to brag that his government has invested more to deal with homelessness than any previous Ontario government. He’s right. But what he doesn’t say is that his governments’ total investments for homelessness and housing haven’t grown (except during the pandemic), so that as homeless investments have grown, investments in new supportive and affordable housing have declined, as illustrated in the chart below (dark blue is housing investments, light blue is homelessness.) And it’s investments in housing that provide the only way for people to move on from being homeless. Homeless funding is the Band-Aid, which is certainly needed, but housing funding provides the cure. The chart is from the report, Provincial Funding for Housing and Homelessness in Ontario, page 3 https://maytree.com/publications/provincial-spending-on-housing-and-homelessness-in-ontario/#:~:text=To%20truly%20address%20chronic%20homelessness,25%25%20increase%20in%20two%20years See also a TVOntario interview with Nate Erskine-Smith, federal Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities, starting at 15:08, https://www.tvo.org/video/how-can-canada-make-housing-affordable
The First Unitarian Church of Hamilton
A Liberal Spiritual Community Since 1889