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THE HARD FILES · AN OPTIONS BRIEF, NOT A PLAN

The Homelessness File

1,595 people on the by-name list · 396 shelter beds, all full · what each option actually costs

This page is an options brief. It walks through the main ways cities tackle homelessness: the best evidence for and against each one, what it cost where it was actually tried, and what a London-sized version would likely cost — with the math shown, or honestly marked as not derivable. It exists so voters can demand costed answers instead of vibes.

It is not a plan, and it recommends nothing. Every option gets the same treatment: evidence for, evidence against, real costs, and who actually holds the power to decide. Where a decision belongs to the province or Ottawa rather than council, the page says so.

Research was completed July 4, 2026, and every claim links to a source that loads and says what's claimed. The eight questions at the bottom go to every candidate in the race, equally, through the site's questionnaire, and their verbatim answers will appear here as they come in.

The honest numbers

Where London actually stands — every figure linked to its source.

How London counts, and what the count says

  • London runs a By-Name List (a continuously updated list of every person actively homeless who consents to a file) and publishes quarterly snapshots. As of December 31, 2024: 1,595 people actively homeless; 15.53% chronic; 19.69% identifying as Indigenous (a figure the city itself flags as an undercount); about 44% of those assessed scoring high acuity, meaning the most complex needs. city snapshot (PDF) ↗
  • 195 people were living unsheltered, meaning they used no emergency shelter at all — again flagged by the city as an undercount. The same quarter saw 107 active deferred encampment sites and 947 encampment responses. Average one-bedroom rent: $1,765 a month. city snapshot (PDF) ↗

Shelter beds and the winter response

  • London has 396 emergency shelter beds, and they run consistently full, per city figures reported in January 2025. CBC ↗
  • The approved winter plan: shelters add beds November 15 to April 15, Ark Aid's 70-bed Cronyn-Warner site keeps its funding, and warming centres open at −15°C. Up to $3.6 million from a reserve fund covers 2026–27. CBC ↗
  • A micro-modular shelter site (70 small individual units, not one big shared shelter) began move-ins in February 2026 and is nearing capacity. city project page ↗

Where the money comes from

  • London spends about $46 million a year on homelessness services: roughly $16 million from the city, almost $22 million from the province, and just under $10 million from two federal programs. The federal share is shrinking. CBC (Dec 2025) ↗
  • The Health & Homelessness Fund for Change (private donations, not tax dollars) started with a $25 million anonymous commitment and has grown to $37.6 million. London Community Foundation ↗
  • A federal encampment agreement (December 2024) adds $5,018,492 in federal money and $6,425,000 in city money over two years for outreach and 30–35 temporary low-barrier beds — beds with few rules about who can come in. federal release ↗
WHERE THE ROUGHLY $46M A YEAR COMES FROM — TO SCALE
City~$16M
Province~$22M
Federal~$10M

The federal share is shrinking, per the same report. CBC (Dec 2025) ↗

Promised versus delivered

  • Promised in July 2023: 12 to 15 service hubs, with 3 to 5 open by end of 2023. Delivered: two — a third was dropped after motel residents faced displacement, and the mayor now says he is "not fixated" on reaching 15. CBC ↗
  • Council endorsed 600 highly supportive housing units within roughly three years (April 2024). Status per the city's own 2026 release: 169 open, and 422 open, in development, or in endorsed proposals still seeking funding. That leaves just over a quarter of the target open with the deadline approaching. city release ↗
PROMISED VERSUS DELIVERED — TO SCALE
Service hubs
12–15 promised (July 2023)
2 open
Highly supportive housing units
600 endorsed (April 2024)
169 open

Bar lengths are to scale. Promises from the July 2023 Whole of Community response and April 2024 council endorsement; delivery counts as of the research date. CBC / city release ↗

What only the province controls

  • Health, addiction, and mental-health treatment are the province's job. Ontario committed almost $550 million to 28 HART hubs; London's provincially run hub opened in late October 2025 with 33 beds, building toward 60 plus 60 supportive housing units in its first year, and filled immediately. CBC ↗
  • The same provincial policy closes London's supervised consumption site: Carepoint at 446 York St. (15,000-plus visits and 218 overdoses prevented in its last year, per its operators) loses funding June 13, 2026. Council cannot vote to keep it open; it can only advocate. CBC ↗
  • Income supports are provincial too: a single person on Ontario Works gets $733 a month total, unchanged since 2018. Against London's own $1,765 average one-bedroom rent, the entire cheque covers less than half the rent. Income Security Advocacy Centre ↗

Two votes about where services can go

  • November 5, 2024 (9–6): council directed that resting spaces not be located on the main street of any of London's five business improvement areas (BIAs) — widely understood to target Ark Aid's 696 Dundas St. space in Old East Village. council minutes ↗
  • April 1, 2025 (11–3): five months later, council funded that same 696 Dundas drop-in ($610,577) and Ark Aid's 70 beds at 432 William St. ($3,078,130, passed 13–1). The ban and the funding sit awkwardly together — the real fight is not help versus don't help, but where services may exist and on what terms. council minutes ↗

The option space

What cities try for this. Evidence for, evidence against, real costs, and who actually decides — for every option, identically. We don’t pick one. That’s the candidates’ job.

Housing First at scale

Permanent housing offered with no preconditions like sobriety or being in treatment, with supports attached to the person rather than the building; the question at scale is whether a whole system can be reorganized around it.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • Finland, the reference case since 2008, converted shelters into apartments; the OECD's review points to public savings of €9,600–€15,000 a year for each person no longer homeless. OECD ↗
  • Canada ran the world's largest Housing First randomized trial (At Home/Chez Soi, 950 adults with serious mental illness). Stable housing was gained at Can$41.73 per day; 69% of costs were offset by savings elsewhere, for a net cost of about Can$6,311 per person per year. peer-reviewed (PubMed) ↗
  • Houston merged roughly 100 agencies into one coordinated system after 2012 and cut regional homelessness by roughly two-thirds since 2011. Governing ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • The evidence is strong for keeping people housed and weak-to-mixed for everything else: a peer-reviewed review finds effects on mental health, substance use, and quality of life inconsistent or absent. Housing First ends homelessness; it does not, by itself, treat addiction or illness. peer-reviewed review ↗
  • Medicine Hat reached "functional zero" chronic homelessness in 2021 — and the status lasted roughly five months. Functional zero is a condition you keep paying to maintain, not a finish line. CBC ↗
  • Houston needs at least US$50 million a year beyond federal funding just to hold the line as pandemic-era money expires. Housing First at scale lasts only as long as its funding does. Kinder Institute ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • Canadian trial (high-needs group): a net of about Can$6,311 per person per year after offsets. The gross cost before offsets is much higher, and the savings land mostly in provincial systems, not with the city fronting the money. peer-reviewed (PubMed) ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

44.28% of people assessed scored high acuity: 44.28% × 1,595 on the by-name list ≈ 706 people. At the trial's net cost, 706 × $6,311 ≈ $4.5M a year net — but that "net" assumes the mostly-provincial savings actually show up and get reinvested, and no current mechanism guarantees that. The gross cost would be several times higher and can't be worked out from the verified source. Apply the same scrutiny to any candidate's Housing First price tag. city snapshot (PDF) ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCECouncil can vote city land, zoning, and coordination; rent supplements and clinical supports are provincial and federal money a councillor can only ask for.

Track every person by name

Knowing every homeless person by name, level of need, and history in real time, and running one shared front door for all agencies, so the system can be managed against monthly targets for people entering and leaving homelessness.

■ CITY DECIDES
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • The cheapest option on the list, and London already largely has it: the by-name list, quarterly public snapshots, and coordinated-access intake (2,968 calls, 2,250 support instances in Q4 2024). city snapshot (PDF) ↗
  • London is among the handful of Canadian communities credited with a quality veteran by-name list — and data quality is what made Medicine Hat's (temporary) functional zero measurable at all. CAEH ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • A list houses no one. Built for Zero's own track record shows communities improving their data and shrinking the veteran and chronic groups while overall numbers rise with the housing market. Built for Zero Canada ↗
  • Measurable progress can slide into managing the metric (narrow groups like veterans) rather than the problem. And the evidence base is advocacy organizations measuring themselves, not independent evaluation. Built for Zero Canada ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • A small add-on everywhere it's tried — staff and data infrastructure inside existing systems, small next to every other option on this page. Built for Zero Canada ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

Not separately derivable — it runs inside the existing ~$46M system, and London already funds it. The voter question is not whether to have the list (London has it) but whether candidates will commit to being judged by its monthly numbers.

■ CITY DECIDESAlready funded and city-run — council's real decision is whether to tie itself publicly to the list's monthly numbers.

Serviced camp sites, or clearing the camps

One end: designated, serviced sites with toilets, water, waste pickup and staffing, up to tiny-cabin communities. The other: clearing encampments through by-law enforcement. London sits between, with a human-rights-based protocol, four daily service depots, and an informal cap of six tents per site.

■ CITY DECIDES
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • The law sets a floor under every promise: in Waterloo v. Persons Unknown (2023 ONSC 670), Ontario's Superior Court held that evicting an encampment when a region lacks enough accessible shelter space violates s. 7 of the Charter. legal clinic summary ↗
  • Serviced sites are the only model with a real Ontario price tag: Kitchener's A Better Tent City (about 50 residents in 42 cabins) ran for years as the province's best-known tiny-cabin community before the Region of Waterloo took it over in 2025. CBC ↗
  • London's middle path is documented and operating: 947 encampment responses in a single quarter under the Coordinated Informed Response, with service depots near sites 90 minutes a day. Globe and Mail ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • Against sanctioned sites, the Waterloo record itself: volunteer burnout, buildings wearing down, and fire, safety, and governance problems forced a public takeover at roughly $115,000 per person per year all-in. And residents remain on the by-name list — the site is not housing. CBC ↗
  • Against enforcement: the Charter ruling plus the arithmetic. With 396 beds consistently full and at least 195 people unsheltered, London would need hundreds of additional accessible beds before clearing camps at scale is even lawful — at about $44,000 a year each. council minutes ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • Waterloo's takeover produced the first real public price: $5.76 million a year ($2.9M site operations + $2.8M for housing options and staff) plus $2.5M one-time capital, for about 50 residents. CBC ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

Site operations alone: $2.9M ÷ 50 ≈ $58,000 per person per year; the full plan, $5.76M ÷ 50 ≈ $115,000. One ABTC-style 50-person site in London would plausibly run $3–6M a year at Waterloo's costed standard. Compare London's contracted shelter cost: $3,078,130 ÷ 70 beds ≈ $44,000 per bed per year. A serviced encampment run to institutional standard is not the cheap option it looks like — the volunteer-era version ran on donated labour and repairs put off. CBC ↗

■ CITY DECIDESAlmost entirely council's to vote (protocol, by-law, sites, city land), which also means almost entirely on the property-tax bill.

More shelter beds, or 24/7 hubs

More overnight beds of the traditional kind, versus 24/7 low-barrier hubs (few rules to get in) that combine resting space, daytime services, and a pathway into housing — London's own hub model.

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCE
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • Demand for 24/7 low-barrier space clearly exceeds supply: London's two open hubs are full, and the provincially run HART hub's first 33 beds (building toward 60, plus 60 supportive housing units) filled immediately on opening. CBC ↗
  • Overnight-only shelter leaves people outside all day — which is exactly the street-disorder complaint downtown. Hubs exist to close that gap. CBC ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • London's own record is the strongest caution: two hubs opened of the twelve to fifteen promised. Hub announcements are cheap; hub locations are politically expensive. CBC ↗
  • What stalled the hubs was location fights as much as money: the 9–6 BIA main-street ban and a third hub dropped over displacement show the real limit is where council allows hubs to exist. Per-hub building and operating costs have never been published — a fair question, since the city has two years of real numbers. council minutes ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • London's own verified unit costs are the comparison points: about $44,000 per shelter bed per year (Ark Aid's $3,078,130 contract ÷ 70 beds) and $610,577 a year for a funded daytime drop-in at 696 Dundas. council minutes ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

Every 100 additional permanent beds ≈ 100 × $44,000 ≈ $4.4M a year to operate, before construction. Closing the end-2024 unsheltered gap with beds alone: at least 195 × $44,000 ≈ $8.6M a year — assuming the contracted rate scales, which it may not, and knowing 195 is itself an undercount. council minutes ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + PROVINCECouncil votes the contracts and, decisively and on the record, the locations; operating money is a blend of city, provincial, federal, and philanthropic dollars.

Build housing with supports attached

Permanent apartments with supports built in — the "highly supportive housing" in London's 600-unit target; the structural difference from shelter is that people exit the homelessness system instead of cycling in it.

□ SHARED — CITY + FEDS
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • The local cost ladder holds up in checkable numbers: Indwell reports its supportive-housing cost below $75 per person per day (roughly $27,000 a year), against London's contracted $44,000-a-year shelter bed, with institutional alternatives (hospital, jail) far higher again. Indwell (self-reported) ↗
  • The city reports a 74% drop in emergency-department visit volumes for House of Hope residents in their first three months — reported by the program itself over a short window, but pointing the same direction as the trial evidence. city release ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • The delivery gap: 169 units open of 600 promised by roughly 2027, with the fuller 422 figure padded by proposals that do not yet have funding. city release ↗
  • Building is the easy half; operating money is the choke point, because ongoing supports are health-system work the province funds unevenly. And it is slow — Embassy Commons took over two years from groundbreaking to move-in. The strongest-evidence option is also the slowest one. CBC ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • Embassy Commons (72 units): verified contributions of $13.2M federal plus $4M city — at least $17.2M ÷ 72 ≈ $240,000-plus per unit in construction money, with provincial and donor money on top. Global News ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — ARITHMETIC SHOWN

Finishing the 600-unit target needs 431 more units. Construction: 431 × ~$240,000–$300,000 ≈ $103M–$130M, mostly federal, provincial, and philanthropic by the Embassy Commons pattern. Operating: 600 × ~$27,000 ≈ $16M a year, most of it properly a provincial health cost. Both stretch verified single-project numbers across the whole target — not a costed plan, and exactly the gap candidates should be asked to fill. Global News ↗

□ SHARED — CITY + FEDSCouncil votes land, zoning, and incentives; construction money follows the federal-provincial-philanthropic pattern and operating supports are provincial — a councillor has to ask for most of the money.

Ask the province and Ottawa

Much of the machinery is not council's, so this option is a councillor's posture toward other governments plus the levers council genuinely votes: the city's ~$16M share, locations and zoning, the encampment protocol, city land, service contracts, and accepting federal agreements.

□ PROVINCE DECIDES
THE EVIDENCE, THE COSTS, WHO DECIDES▾
EVIDENCE FOR
  • The asks are concrete: HART hub capacity and rules are provincial, a ~$550M, 28-hub program whose first 33 London beds filled immediately, while the same policy closes Carepoint on June 13, 2026. Canadian Affairs ↗
  • Ontario Works rates are provincial ($733 a month, frozen since 2018), a structural driver no city program can offset at scale. And London has already tapped the federal $250M encampment stream for $5M — proof the channel can deliver when pursued. Income Security Advocacy Centre ↗
EVIDENCE AGAINST / LIMITS
  • This option has no outcome evidence of its own — it is a funding channel, not a program. Its honest test is a candidate's specificity: which program, what dollar figure, requested from whom, and what the fallback is when the answer is no. CBC (Dec 2025) ↗
  • Portable rent supplements have hard limits: Toronto's Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit allocation is fully committed and closed to new referrals — an honest preview of what happens when a fixed pot of money meets demand. City of Toronto ↗
WHAT IT COST ELSEWHERE
  • Reference amounts: ~$550M provincial HART program; $250M federal encampment stream (Budget 2024), of which London's agreement drew $5,018,492 federal against $6,425,000 city. federal release ↗
AT LONDON'S SCALE — NOT DERIVABLE FROM PUBLIC DATA

Not derivable — a funding channel has no unit cost. What can be judged is the ask itself: a specific program, a dollar figure, a named person or ministry to ask, and a stated fallback beat a promise to "fight for London's fair share."

□ PROVINCE DECIDESCouncil can pass resolutions and send asks — it votes none of these outcomes; treatment, income supports, and most of the money sit with Queen's Park and Ottawa.

Where this file meets the Downtown File

  • The services are concentrated downtown and in Old East Village — Ark Aid at 696 Dundas, the 70-bed shelter at 432 William, the Salvation Army Centre of Hope, and the soon-to-close Carepoint site at 446 York. council minutes ↗
  • Council has restricted exactly where such services may exist: the November 2024 motion (9–6) bans new resting spaces from the main street of all five BIAs — then council funded the 696 Dundas drop-in 11–3 five months later. The 2026–27 council inherits that contradiction. council minutes ↗
  • Downtown's economics make every location fight harder: downtown office vacancy is 31.5%, and a May 2026 CBC reader survey put homelessness and open drug use at the top of voter concerns, especially downtown and in Old East Village. The full picture is in the Downtown File at /files/downtown/. CBC survey ↗
  • The newest moving piece: Carepoint closes June 13, 2026 by provincial decision. Wherever its 15,000-plus annual visits go next lands on the blocks city candidates answer for. Jurisdiction honesty cuts both ways — candidates shouldn't be blamed for the closure, and shouldn't pretend the aftermath isn't theirs to manage. CBC ↗

What a costed answer looks like

Any candidate can say this issue matters. These questions ask for numbers and mechanisms — every candidate gets them, equally.

  1. London promised 600 supportive housing units by 2027, and 169 are open. How many will be open on time, and which programs pay to build and run the rest?
  2. London promised 12 to 15 service hubs and opened two. Keep the target or retire it, and if you keep it, name two sites you would vote yes on.
  3. A London shelter bed costs about $44,000 a year under the city's own contract. In your first budget, how do you split dollars between shelter beds and supportive housing, and why?
  4. Courts bar clearing encampments when accessible shelter is full, and London's 396 beds run full. On a January night with every bed taken, what happens under your rules, and what does it cost?
  5. Only $16M of London's $46M homelessness budget is city money, and the federal share is shrinking. When a senior-government dollar disappears, is your rule to backfill from property taxes, cut the service, or something you can name?
  6. The Fund for Change is $37.6M of donor money that built services taxpayers will have to run. What pays the operating bills when the philanthropy is spent?
  7. Ontario Works pays $733 a month against an average $1,765 London one-bedroom, and that rate is provincial, not council's. Name the exact ask you would move at council, and your plan when Queen's Park says no.
  8. London counts its homeless population by name every month. Will you commit to a public monthly target for that list and be judged on it, and what is the number?

What your ward is wrestling with

This file lands differently on every street.Jump straight to your ward’s own issue list:

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CLAIMS WE COULDN’T VERIFY — SO THEY’RE NOT ON THIS PAGE ▾

These circulate in coverage of this issue but could not be traced to a source that loads and says what’s claimed. We’d rather show you the gap than publish the number.

  • "2,294 on the by-name list at end of 2025, up 124% from 2021" — search-summary only; the verified anchor is 1,595 (Dec 31, 2024).
  • "More than 300 Londoners living unsheltered" (fall 2025) — not locatable in the cited article; verified alternative is 195 at end-2024, itself an undercount.
  • "~200 people in 105 tents, plus 100 fully unsheltered" (January 2025) — unconfirmed; verified equivalent is 107 active encampment sites at end-2024.
  • Houston "more than 30,000 people housed" — widely repeated, not verifiable on the fetched pages.
  • Embassy Commons total project cost "$22 million" — only the $13.2M federal and $4M city components are verified.
  • London "first in Canada to end veteran homelessness (2020)" — verified only that London is among five communities with quality veteran by-name lists.
  • Ontario HART "$529M for 27 hubs" — Ontario's April 1, 2025 release says almost $550M for 28 new hubs; CBC has also printed $529M.
  • Exact current ODSP single maximum (~$1,435/month) — unconfirmed; this page says only that ODSP is indexed and OW is not.
  • At Home/Chez Soi gross intervention cost (~$22,257/person/year) — not in the verified abstract; only the net $6,311 and $41.73/day figures are used here.
  • Winter framework "adds 20 shelter spaces" — verified only that shelters each add capacity by 5 beds seasonally, with no confirmed citywide total.