The costs of Ontario’s affordable housing crisis and homelessness disaster to individuals, communities and government are enormous, yet Ontario’s housing spending has been dropping sharply since 2000 and is currently at 14 cents per person per day. The Wellesley Institute, in our provincial pre-budget submission on housing and homelessness, is calling on the Ontario government to:

• honour the housing commitments that it made in 2003;
• stop blocking the $392.5 million in stalled federal housing dollars;
• and, upload the cost of housing back to the provincial level and increase overall housing spending to 25 cents per capita per day as a first step to ramping up housing spending to meet housing need.