A 'staggering' 80,000 people and more were homeless in Ontario last year, new report finds

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.

That would require an $11-billion investment over 10 years to create more than 75,000 affordable and supportive housing units. The municipalities also said some $2 billion over eight years is needed to ensure all people living in encampments are properly housed.

"Those numbers are shocking," said Robin Jones, president of the association and the mayor of Westport, Ont., north of Kingston.

The association pulled data from the province's 47 service managers who deal with social housing and homelessness.

There are now 25 per cent more people living in shelters or on the streets compared to two years ago, the report found.

AMO policy director Lindsay Jones said they knew the problem was widespread, but still found the total number of homeless people to be "staggering."

"To put the numbers in context, that's about the same size as the city of Peterborough," she said in an interview.

"Imagine everyone in Peterborough being homeless or everybody in Sault Ste. Marie being homeless, that's the scale of what we're talking about."

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.

The association hired an outside firm, HelpSeeker, to help gather and analyze the data. They ran several models to game out what would happen under good, neutral and poor economic scenarios over the next 10 years.

If there is an economic downturn, the modelling suggests there would be nearly 300,000 homeless people within 10 years. Should there be an upturn, they project there would be nearly 130,000.