Homelessness is created by the Ontario Government and it is about rent
We need to be very clear about why homelessness is rising in Ontario. The numbers of people without housing and sleeping in shelters. It is not the result of a lack of apartments.People end up homeless because they are poor. Most receive either OW or ODSP. The increase in homelessness is the direct result of a lack of rent money; specifically the fact that neither ODSP and OW provide enough rent money to rent anything anywhere in Toronto.
As of January 2018 Ow provides $384 and ODSP provides $489 for rent; while the average one bedroom apartment costs over $1600. A single room in shared accommodation starts at $600. The gap between the rent money in both systems and the actual cost of rent has been growing for at least a decade. It has dramatically increased in the last four years. The Provincial government ignored this.
ODSP and OW are Provincial benefit programs. Benefit recipients are forbidden from having any other income. The overwhelming majority of homeless people receive ODSP or OW. Successive Provincial governments have ignored the disproportionate rent increases over the last decade and particularly over the last four years. They have not increased the rent money.
Therefore the Provincial government’s callous negligence directly caused the increase in homelessness in Toronto and in most Ontario cities. Across Ontario homelessness will increase until the Provincial government increases the money allocated for rent in both ODSP and OW.