A new report on the municipal struggle with homelessness shows not only is the crisis on the rise, but it’s increasing more rapidly in Northern Ontario than the rest of the province.
Northern populations are approximately five per cent of Ontario’s total population, but account for nearly 10 per cent of all known homelessness.
The north has seen a 117-per-cent increase in the number of people who are homeless since 2021, versus a 49.5-per-cent increase across the southern part of the province.
The new report, released Jan. 12, is called Municipalities Under Pressure: One Year Later and was created by the Northern Ontario Service Deliverers Association (NOSDA), in partnership with the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association (OMSSA).
It builds on their previous report, released in 2025, detailing the situation from a data standpoint and containing the municipal data available from 2016 to 2024, which the organizations state was to create a baseline of information. The new report adds the numbers from 2025, a comparison to the baseline and a prediction for a decade in the future.
That prediction doesn’t bode well: Under “steady conditions” in the economy, they predict an increase to 16,900 people who are homeless in Northern Ontario. However, under what they describe as “an economic downturn,” the association predicts there will be 27,500 people without a place to live.
By their analysis, homelessness has not returned to pre-2020 levels in Ontario, even as housing and homelessness funding increased and services expanded.
“This indicates that the availability of housing and support has not kept pace with the scale or persistence of homelessness following the pandemic,” the report states.
Between 2016 and 2020, known homelessness in Ontario increased gradually, by approximately 6.3 per cent over four years. From 2021 to 2025, known homelessness increased by approximately 49.1 per cent.
“This acceleration coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic period,” states the report.
It’s much different in Northern Ontario. The updated report states that from 2024 to 2025, known homelessness in the region increased by 37.3 per cent, (“known homeless” means the people who are counted within the data, which frequently misses those who avoid counts or are precariously housed.)
“Taken together, these trends indicate that homelessness in Ontario is not a temporary crisis,” the report states. “Instead, growth is being sustained by ongoing system conditions that affect how many people enter homelessness, how long they remain unhoused, and whether sufficient housing capacity exists to support exits at scale.”
Of the municipalities considered service managers (including the City of Greater Sudbury), the report states 42 of 47 reported at least one encampment, with nearly 2,000 encampments across the province. Reporting also indicates that enforcement and site-management activities, i.e. bylaw enforcement, “tend to change where encampments are located and how visible they are, often resulting in movement into vehicles, more hidden locations, or smaller, short-lived sites, rather than reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness,” reads the report.
Spending increased but homelessness did, too
Public funding for housing and homelessness in Ontario has increased substantially while homelessness continues to rise, states the report. In 2025, combined housing and homelessness funding was estimated at just over $4 billion, more than double the level reported in 2018.
However, while the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 49.1 per cent between 2021 and 2025, total funding only increased by 32.1 per cent over the same period, with municipal funding increasing by 48.2 per cent.
Over the same period, program expenditures increased by 75.4 per cent overall — rising by 88 per cent for homelessness programs and 66.1 per cent for housing programs — indicating that municipalities are “increasingly absorbing the cost of managing higher and more persistent levels of homelessness through local service delivery,” the report reads.
It states emergency shelters have remained the largest area of homelessness-related expenditure, with spending on shelters increasing by 51.6 per cent since 2021. Community housing has remained the largest area of housing program expenditure, but spending declined by 0.6 per cent over the same period, highlighting what the report calls “limited growth in deeply affordable housing despite rising need.”
While the 2025 numbers are not yet available, the cost of homelessness in Sudbury in 2024 is as follows:
- From the federal government: A total of $7,536,000 spent on homelessness initiatives. Of that total, $2,436,000 was spent on social services (i.e., emergency shelters, housing assistance, community outreach, coordinated access, etc.) and $5,100,000 on housing (i.e., non-profit, rent supplements, capital repair projects, etc.).
- Provincial government: A total of $15,828,000 spent on homelessness initiatives. Of that total, $6,653,000 was spent on social services (i.e., emergency shelters, housing assistance, community outreach and support services, etc.) and $9,175,000 on housing (administration, rent supplements, capital builds/repair projects, housing allowance, etc.).
- Municipal government: A total of $24,122,000 spent on homelessness initiatives. Of that total, $1,155,000 was spent on social service and $22,967,000 on housing.
And that’s today; the report paints a bleak picture of the future.
Factoring in “updated assumptions about economic conditions, housing affordability, population change, and related drivers,” the report authors state homelessness in Ontario is projected to continue increasing through 2035.
Under steady conditions, states the report, known homelessness is projected to reach approximately 177,000 people provincewide by 2035. Under an economic downturn scenario, projected homelessness would exceed 297,000 people, the projection suggests.
In Northern Ontario, homelessness is projected to increase from current levels to approximately 16,900 people under steady conditions and to more than 27,500 people under a downturn scenario by 2035.
“This reflects an amplified version of the broader provincial trend, with homelessness in the north growing much faster than funding and system capacity because of a lack of housing and limited service infrastructure,” the report states.
In response to the report, the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) issued a press release backing up the information.
“This data confirms what Northern communities have been living with every day,” said Dave Plourde, FONOM president. “Homelessness in the north is accelerating faster than our housing supply, health systems and community supports can keep up with. Municipalities are doing everything they can, but the scale of the crisis now demands decisive leadership and coordinated action from the province.”
FONOM notes that homelessness in Northern Ontario is increasingly driven by untreated mental illness and addiction, “particularly substance-use disorders involving methamphetamine and opioids.”
The release states “these realities” are placing enormous strain on emergency rooms, police services, shelters, and municipal budgets, especially in small, rural, and remote communities with limited service capacity.
While the report itself asks for more data tracking and more accountability and transparency in spending, FONOM is calling on the province to amend the Mental Health Act “to better reflect modern understandings of addiction as a substance-use disorder and to review the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.” It also calls for collaboration with the federal government, “to allow for temporary, health-focused detention — without charge — of individuals found acutely intoxicated by drugs or other substances, where necessary for their own safety or that of the community.”
FONOM also supports AMO’s call for long-term provincial and federal investment in deeply affordable and supportive housing, mental health and addictions services, and income supports, and “stresses that municipal property taxes are not a sustainable funding source for addressing a crisis of this magnitude.”
Beyond the human cost, states FONOM, “homelessness is increasingly undermining local economies, making it harder for northern communities to attract workers, retain businesses, and invest in long-term growth.
Bottom line, the FONOM president called for more compassion in the system.
“This is about compassionate, temporary intervention — not criminalization,” said Plourde in the release. “Frontline police, paramedics, and hospitals are cycling the same individuals through emergency systems with no ability to stabilize them or connect them to care. Northern communities need tools that reflect today’s realities.”
-with files from Tyler Clarke
Jenny Lamothe covers vulnerable and marginalized populations, housing and the justice system for Sudbury.com.