Homelessness in Canada continues to rise, even as the federal government spends over half a billion dollars a year to fight it, according to a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The PBO report says in spite of averaging $561 million a year in spending, the situation has not been improved.
“The best available evidence suggests that homelessness has increased in spite of Reaching Home,” said the report, which noted a 20 percent jump in the number of homeless people since 2018, and a 38 percent increase in the number of “chronically homeless people.”
The number of individuals living in unsheltered locations increased 88 percent, the report said.
“One in four people are experiencing food insecurity, the highest rate in recorded history,” said the release. “All jurisdictions except for Prince Edward Island are failing in the affordable housing section of the report,” it added, referring to the organization’s Canada 2024 Poverty Report Card.
“Though deeply concerning, these results are sadly unsurprising to the thousands of food banks across the country who have seen a 50 per cent increase in visits since 2021,” said Food Banks Canada CEO Kirstin Beardsley in the release. “All levels of government and all jurisdictions working together is the only effective way to decrease and reverse poverty and food insecurity.”
The bleak news prompted a sharp exchange in Question Period on May 22 between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.
“Today, the Parliamentary Budget Officer released a damning report that showed that after the prime minister promised he would eliminate chronic homelessness, it’s actually gone up 38 percent,” said Mr. Poilievre. “And the number of people living in unsheltered locations is up 88 percent ... so if it costs a half a billion dollars for him to drive up homelessness, how much would it cost to drive it down?”
The prime minister replied that his government is doing what it can.
“The reality is ... we’ve invested billions in countering homelessness, and we’re going to continue to invest in eliminating encampments and supporting Canadians and communities in vulnerable communities across the country. The leader of the Opposition’s solution is to do less to fight homelessness, to invest less in vulnerable people,” said Mr. Trudeau.
Mr. Poilievre responded that the spending does not seem to be working and pointed to recent reports by Food Banks Canada and the Salvation Army showing that food bank usage is also going up.
“Three devastating reports in one day demonstrate the NDP-Liberal prime minister is not worth the cost,” he said. “First, we had Food Banks Canada and the Salvation Army say record numbers are forced to go to food banks, that over half of people are worse off than they were a year ago. And now the PBO says there are there is more homelessness. There’s more homelessness and hunger.”
Mr. Trudeau responded that the government continues to “invest in Canadians” and ”in supporting food banks, invest in community organizations that are on the front lines of supporting vulnerable Canadians.”
The money spent on homelessness is helping, said the PBO report, pointing out that between 2019 and 2023, it helped find stable housing placements for 17,849 people and emergency shelter for 5,399 people annually.
But, said the PBO, a lot more money is needed to fix the problem.
“We estimate that achieving a 50% reduction in chronic homelessness would require an additional $3.5 billion per year, approximately a 7-fold increase in funding over the National Housing Strategy average,” said the report.
It also shows that federal spending is only a small proportion of what local and provincial governments across the country are spending on the problem.
“An evaluation for 2015-16 found that provinces and municipalities spent $13.02 for every dollar contributed by the federal government, meaning that federal funding covered 7.1% of spending” on homelessness, the report said.
Another complicating factor, it said, is that spending money is no guarantee people will stay in stable housing.
“A second key challenge is that housing placements do not reduce future homelessness on a one-for-one basis because some of the homeless people placed in stable housing would have found housing anyways and some people placed in stable housing return to homelessness,” the report said.
However, the report added that stable housing does increase the chances of individuals staying off the streets.
“Placing a homeless person in stable housing increases the probability they will be stably housed, months and years later,” the report said.
