May 12, 2026
According to the latest estimates, nearly 85,000 people across Ontario experienced homelessness in 2025, an increase of eight per cent year over year. As the housing crisis grows, so does public discourse, ranging from safety and human rights concerns to policy debates.
To help wade through the noise, we invited a panel of Wilfrid Laurier University researchers to share their expertise and dispel common misconceptions about homelessness.
Panelists:
Erin Dej, associate professor of Criminology, who supports efforts to prevent, reduce and end homelessness while building social inclusion. She recently co-developed homelessness learning materials for secondary school students and co-produced the documentary Bridging Divides: Voices and Visions about Homelessness in Midsize Cities.
Maritt Kirst, associate professor of Community Psychology, whose focus is increasing access to community-based health care and social services, including housing, for marginalized populations. Read her report from The Restart Project: A research demonstration of Housing First for youth experiencing homelessness and co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.
Laura Pin, associate professor of Political Science, whose research on housing and homelessness helps integrate community knowledge into public policy. She and Dej recently co-authored the report Rethinking municipal responses to encampments: Building a human rights approach in Ontario.
KIRST: There is often an assumption that a person experiencing homelessness has done something wrong or has had some sort of individual failing. In most cases, people experiencing homelessness have experienced trauma, poverty, unemployment, or physical or mental health struggles – things that are beyond their individual control.
PIN: Individual explanations can seem satisfying because they’re quite simple and they absolve us of any sort of responsibility or action. As a political scientist, it’s hard to separate the prominence of homelessness from ongoing disinvestment in social housing and mental health and addiction supports.
KIRST: What homelessness really reflects is a systems failure, where social systems are not providing enough support for people experiencing these complex, challenging situations. The assumption of individual responsibility has guided policy and programming decisions, so a big part of addressing homelessness is dismantling these moral-based, stigmatizing judgments and investing in system-level solutions that address root causes.
DEJ: At this point, the scale and scope of homelessness is too large for the answer to be as simple as the common narrative that people are just making bad choices. There are a few demographics that help illustrate this more clearly. For example, young people cannot have caused their homelessness because we don’t expect children to be responsible for their own housing. We also know that half of the people aged 50 and over who are homeless right now are experiencing it for the first time. They are not chronically homeless or making “lifestyle” choices. They are affected by our current economic situation, perhaps by a renoviction or the death of a spouse, and now they can’t cover the rent themselves. Among women and gender-diverse people who are homeless, the number one reason that they lost their last housing is because of a breakup. They had to choose between exiting a relationship and keeping their housing.
DEJ: Research shows that 30 per cent of people who are currently homeless have jobs. Being employed doesn’t mean having adequate income to pay for housing.
For people who aren’t employed, there can be many reasons for that. Perhaps they don’t have transportation to get to a job. They may be sharing a room in a shelter with dozens of other people, so getting adequate sleep to wake up on time and go to work is virtually impossible. In a shelter that I used to spend time in, there were residents who wanted to return to construction jobs, but they were required to buy their own steel-toed boots and couldn’t afford them. We may think “just get a job,” but there are all sorts of barriers in the way.
PIN: I often talk about homelessness as debilitating, in the sense that it makes people sicker. If you have a disability, it’s likely to get worse. If you don’t have a disability, you may develop one. When I’ve worked with people who are experiencing homelessness or staying in encampments, 68 per cent self-identify as having a disability.
KIRST: There is a misconception that people are homeless because they’re using substances, whereas it’s often the other way around. People start using substances as a coping mechanism for the stress and instability of homelessness. Or some people that I’ve talked to have experienced a major injury on the job, then developed an addiction to pain medication and it spirals out of control, leading to housing instability. There can be linkages between homelessness and substance use, but it’s not a primary cause in every situation.
DEJ: I think one of the reasons this narrative comes up a lot is because folks who are struggling with substance use are among the most visible. But, really, visible homelessness is only the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of people experiencing hidden homelessness or living on the street and working very hard to stay under the radar. So, if it seems like every unhoused person you see is using substances, you’re only seeing a small segment of the homeless population.
PIN: Homelessness is so much bigger than being unsheltered. It includes people who are living in unsafe situations, newcomers to Canada who are couch surfing between friends, and people who are in emergency shelters and transitional housing because those are not permanent.
DEJ: There are many types of hidden homelessness. A service provider recently told me about a mom and her children whose roof caved in during a rainstorm. Their landlord said, “It’s going to be a while before I get around to fixing your roof. Just stay in the living room.” It was winter and they had to huddle in the living room for weeks on end. That family isn’t considered homeless because they have an address, but that’s what people are experiencing. What we count as “housing” for low-income people can be degrading.
KIRST: People experiencing housing precarity tend to be forgotten. It’s important to direct supports and services for different levels of housing instability, beyond just chronic homelessness.
DEJ: When homelessness is hidden, we don’t invest in it because politicians and policymakers aren’t getting angry phone calls from neighbours and constituents. We know that particular groups are more likely to be part of the hidden homeless, including women and gender diverse people, young people, Indigenous peoples and newcomers, so when we under-invest in hidden homelessness, we’re under-investing in key populations. Most services and supports are not designed to meet their needs.
“People think we made bad choices, but they don’t see the years of things falling apart. You don’t end up here overnight and you don’t get out of it alone.”
KIRST: There is a misconception that temporary, reactive responses to homelessness like emergency shelters and transitional housing are solutions when, in fact, they’re really stopgap measures. What we need are more proactive interventions that help people access permanent, affordable housing because housing is a human right.
DEJ: They are called “emergency” shelters because they are designed for emergencies. They are not designed for long-term housing. But that’s how they’re being used now because there’s nowhere for people to go.
PIN: There is also a significant gap between the need for shelter spaces and availability. In Waterloo Region, there are about 2,400 people experiencing homelessness, including just over 1,000 who are unsheltered. There are only 500 emergency shelter spaces locally.
Even when someone is offered an emergency shelter space, there are often good reasons why it’s not a feasible or accessible option. Perhaps staying together as a couple is important to their safety and they’re not allowed to, or they would have to be separated from their pet, who is their primary form of support. Or perhaps Cambridge is where they have a support network and connections with service workers, but the available shelter space is in Kitchener and they have no way of getting back and forth.
KIRST: Shelters aren’t necessarily a desirable place to be. You have to leave every day and comply with a lot of rules. There can be violence and stealing. Many people have had terrible experiences there. That’s why we often see people choose to stay in encampments where they may feel a greater sense of control, community and support.
PIN: There is no evidence that closing encampments makes communities safer. There was a study done in New York a few years ago that looked at reported crime rates before and after an encampment was closed in a neighborhood and it found no change.
Because encampments are so visible, it’s easy to blame anything that goes wrong in a neighborhood on the people who are staying there. But people who are staying in encampments are often concerned about being good neighbours so they can minimize the negative attention they’re attracting.
DEJ: Sometimes bad things happen in encampments. Just as some housed people commit crimes, so do some homeless people. If someone engages in deviant behaviour and they’re living in an apartment unit, we don’t evict everyone in the building. We evict that one person. This idea that we should shut down an entire encampment if something negative happens isn’t consistent with the common sense of how we respond to crime. Also, people know that unsheltered folks are vulnerable, so they often become the victims of exploitation rather than the perpetrators.
PIN: Displacing people from encampments doesn’t do anything to address homelessness. A research study in Toronto found that the vast majority of people who were displaced from encampments continued to be homeless. Dr. Dej, myself and a group of community-based researchers conducted our own survey of more than 100 people who had stayed in encampments in Waterloo Region and Hamilton and discovered that, overwhelmingly, people experienced significant harms through displacement: loss of essential survival materials and belongings; loss of identification and personal documents, which can make it more difficult to access housing and services; and loss of connection with service providers, family and friends.
KIRST: There are absolutely solutions to homelessness. Much of my research is focused on evaluating Housing First programs, which provide people experiencing homelessness with permanent housing, rent supplements, and health and social supports without having to meet prerequisites for treatment or sobriety. Housing First programs are highly effective at increasing housing stability for adults and there’s emerging evidence of effectiveness for youth. We recently tested an adapted Housing First model for young people aged 16 to 24. After a year, Housing First participants spent an average of 73 per cent of their time in stable housing compared to 35 per cent of control group participants who accessed regular services in the community.
PIN: One of the complexities in addressing homelessness is that it requires meaningful investment and cooperation between federal, provincial and municipal governments. In Canada, the amount of social housing is not increasing at all. A lot of government investment is just to maintain housing stock that was built in the 1960s and 1970s. Toronto still sees a decline in the amount of social housing available year over year and we see this trend reflected in other municipalities as well.
Currently, the federal government is considering another 10-year National Housing Strategy. I think it’s an opportunity to address some of the limitations in the first strategy, which was an important investment but didn’t go far enough to address homelessness.
Our housing crisis is not just an availability problem – it’s also an income problem. We need to raise social assistance rates in line with the cost of living to meaningfully assist people in accessing market housing.
KIRST: There are existing mechanisms that could be enhanced to make housing more affordable, like expanding availability of rent supplements through the Canada Housing Benefit within the National Housing Strategy. Often, people will need long-term, home-based support to maintain housing stability, including case management and health services. All levels of government need to significantly invest in integrated, wraparound supports for people as they exit homelessness.
Preventing and addressing youth homelessness is another incredibly crucial step because 45 per cent of people who experience homelessness as adults experienced homelessness as a child or young person.
DEJ: If someone has a roof over their head today, it’s so much easier and cheaper to keep them there than to find new housing once they’ve become mired in homelessness. Our social safety net has been eroded, but if, for example, we bring back fulsome supports for people when they lose their jobs or become ill so that they don’t have to lose their housing, we can stop homelessness before it starts.
William O’Leary, an assistant professor in the Lyle S. Hallman Faculty of Social Work, is leading a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded study called “Aging on the Fringes” to challenge the common myth that homelessness is the result of individual choices. His research shows that for many older adults, housing instability is shaped by long-term structural factors such as rising housing costs, inadequate income supports, health challenges and gaps in services. Through partnerships with people with lived and living experience, as well as community organizations and service providers, the study is identifying practical, equity-oriented solutions and supporting advocacy efforts, including more inclusive housing models and low-barrier supports.
In Waterloo Region, the growing impacts of climate change – including extreme weather events and increasing costs of living – are intersecting with a deepening housing crisis, disproportionately affecting low-income tenants, people with disabilities and seniors on fixed incomes. Laurier faculty members Manuel Riemer, Alexis Buettgen and Laura Pin are collaborating with the Social Development Centre and community members with lived experience of homelessness to co-develop a community-led climate justice resilience strategy, ensuring that those most affected by climate and housing challenges are central to shaping solutions.
In partnership with charitable organization Golden Village for the Elderly, Associate Professor of Social Work Anh Ngo is supporting Vietnamese seniors' efforts to advocate for affordable and culturally appropriate housing and support services. Immigrant seniors often report language and cultural barriers as key to their challenges with Canadian health and social services, as well as their Canadian-raised children and grandchildren. Ngo is helping 20 seniors in the Greater Toronto Area bridge language and intergenerational divides by creating digital stories that voice their housing-related challenges, needs and strengths to their loved ones, caregivers, service providers and policymakers.
