EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park
TORONTO - After finding over 80,000 people who experienced homelessness in Ontario last year, the group representing the province’s municipalities is once again raising alarms about the crisis.
As a result of what it called “the most ambitious study of homelessness conducted across Ontario,” the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) wrote that the issue has “deepened significantly” recently and “will only get worse if we don’t take action.”
AMO estimated in its “Municipalities Under Pressure” report that 81,515 Ontarians experienced “known homelessness” in 2024.
The count was based on data the province’s 47 service managers, who help manage homelessness, provided to AMO. “Known homelessness” refers to people who the homelessness-serving system is aware of through their use of shelters, inclusion on service managers’ by-name lists or point-in-time counts, and more.
AMO found that more than half of people in Ontario who experienced homelessness last year did so chronically — meaning they were without somewhere to live for prolonged or repeated periods. About one-quarter of the total who experienced chronic homelessness in 2024 were younger than 25 years old, it found.
In total, 25 per cent more people experienced homelessness in Ontario in 2024 than had in 2022, AMO found.
On average, homelessness has increased by about 50 per cent in Ontario communities since 2016, according to AMO’s report. The group highlighted, however, that rural and northern Ontario communities have experienced significantly sharper rises in homelessness.
According to AMO, compared to eight years earlier, there were 150 per cent more homeless people in rural communities and more than 200 per cent more homeless people in northern Ontario.
Along with the data it gathered about homelessness in Ontario in 2024, AMO’s report also projects the crisis will worsen and outlines various policies and investments governments could take and make to remedy the issue.
AMO published its report at 11 a.m. on Thursday. The Trillium has asked spokespeople for Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra for the government's response to it. This story will be updated to include it and more details later on Thursday.
More to come…
