The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can Ontario Mayors Align to Solve Homelessness?

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Homelessness and addiction topped the mayor's agenda at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference. The Agenda talks to four Ontario mayors about how they are finding solutions and what they're demanding from the provincial government.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Back in the day, you might ask, where is homelessness a growing problem in Ontario? Today, it's the opposite. Where is it not a growing problem? Municipalities are spending increasing amounts, sometimes with provincial assistance, but often not, to combat the problem. Joining us now to discuss some potential solutions to homelessness in Ontario, we welcome, in order of population size, Josh Morgan. He is the mayor of London. Mary Ann Mead Morgan, he is the mayor of London.

Mary Ann Meade Ward, she is the mayor of Burlington. Dorothy McCabe, she is the mayor of Waterloo. And Joe Preston, he is the mayor of St. Thomas. And I wanna start, you know what? We're gonna start with the smallest city. The big cities get all the attention all the time. So Mayor Preston, we're gonna start with you. St. Thomas, Ontario, 50,000 people.

Do I read this right? You have reduced, over the last few years, homelessness by a third. Is that correct? Yeah, it is correct. We've been recognized under the Built for Zero plan to have made some very good inroads in addressing homelessness in St. Thomas.

How have you done it? Well, it's about gathering everybody together. I know that every municipality has been working on a housing crisis, we want to call it, across the board. And we just said we have to have a council that wants to fix it and a group of community support that also wants to play the role in how to do it. It seems to be working.

It takes time and it takes the effort to get started and keep going at it. Mayor McCabe, if you don't mind, would you take, just before I ask you my first question, a few steps backwards so we can see the whole slogan on your shirt? Oh. There we go. Okay. Solve the crisis. I was at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference, annual conference a couple of weeks ago, as I'm sure all of you were.

And I saw those t-shirts a lot. What does that refer to? Well, solve the crisis. I mean, first of all, it's a website that any of your listeners can go to. And there's some advocacy tools there to let your local member of parliament, provincial and federal parliament know that we need their support, primarily through funding and some changes legislatively and with regulation changes. But this

is a call to action from Ontario's big city mayors. Mayor Meade Ward is the chair of OVCM and she can speak to it as well. But we're saying to the

provincial and federal governments that to it as well. But we're saying to the provincial and federal governments, we appreciate the funding that you've given us over the last couple of years. We need it. But this crisis has grown to such a significant extent that we need new funding tools. And particularly, we need a point person at the province in particular, a minister or a new ministry where we can streamline our approach to it because it's taking far too long to get programs in place or to make changes or to be nimble enough

to make the changes that we need, we know will work in our communities. So we're asking the provincial government to establish a standalone ministry, because right now we have to work across about 16 or 17 different ministries to get answers, to get funding, to get changes in programs. So it's cumbersome, we need to streamline it. So those are some of the highlights of Solve the Crisis

that again, Ontario big city mayors have launched this campaign in August. So we're seeing good pick up and including, we're really pleased to be talking about it here today, Steve. Well let me pick up with Mayor Mead Ward on that because you similarly, I think last time I saw you had one of those t-shirts on and you were at the bare pit session where all 37 I think cabinet ministers from the government of Ontario were there to take your questions. And I guess, let me follow up on this right now.

Because what you're trying to do, yes, the minister of health has a piece of it. The minister of housing has a piece of it. The minister of mental health and addictions has a piece of it. And I could go on and on. Why do you think creating one minister responsible for all of it would move the yardsticks by creating, I mean, I guess some would say you're going to create an extra layer of bureaucracy and

this won't help. So make the argument if you would. People fall through the cracks right now and nobody can compel those 16, upwards of 16 ministries to come together to take action. So it's a homelessness problem, it's a mental health and addictions problem, which is our health department. It's affecting tourism sector. We heard about a city that lost a major conference because the visitors that were checking out the city saw encampments in the downtown, didn't feel their participants would be safe.

People are not coming to downtowns anymore because the businesses that people are camping in, you know, in doorways of businesses. So this cuts across many different ministries, but there's no one person who has the authority to bring them all together or the resources to say, we need to get this done, we need to take action and you know talk is cheap. We've been talking about this at the Ontario Big City Mayor's Caucus for at least three to four years. We suggested some policy recommendations back in 2021, met with Minister Sylvia Jones at the time brought with us members of the Chamber of

Commerce, police, hospital sector, of course, members of our own caucus to say this is, this touches many different areas, but there's no one individual. And even though there's, you know, this government for the first time appointed Michael Tavolo, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, he has no funding and he has no authority to compel his colleagues to step up and get things done. So that's the first step that needs to take place. The second step is convene an action table. The solutions are out there in places like St. Thomas, places like London, Kingston.

Municipalities have stepped up, even though this is actually out of our jurisdiction in many respects, but we've stepped up and shown what works. Now we need the government to help us fund that, not only capital but operating so it can continue and we also need to scale up because the need is massive,400 encampments across Ontario in big and small cities, rural and urban. That's an astonishing number. And Mayor Morgan, maybe I could bring you in at this point. You're the largest city represented here today, London, Ontario, 440,000 people. What are you doing that's working in London right now to attack homelessness?

One is we pulled the whole community together through a series of summits, which combines all the frontline service providers with city staff, the development community, the business community, emergency services. And we designed a system that was really designed around moving people from encampments into housing. And one of the steps along the way was a hubs-based system

to help those with the highest acuity, lower their acuity, or move into the right type of housing for them. But ultimately, everything is geared towards housing and for those with the highest needs, supportive housing. We found that this is working exceptionally well with the two hubs that we've established as well, the supporting housing units that we've brought up to speed. And we just can't scale it without support

from other levels of government, which is the challenge. I'll give you an example. Within one of our supportive housing partnerships between London Cares, a homeless service agency, and our hospital system, LHSC, we have people in supportive housing who have been there for six months. And when we compare their consumption of emergency room

services and land ambulance services, contacts with police, they are way down over the month, the sixth month period beforehand. In fact, 81% fewer emergency room visits for the same population, 56% fewer days spent in hospital as an inpatient, 54% fewer instances of being admitted to a hospital, 63% fewer days in custody, 51% fewer interactions with police, people's substance use is way down. Like we know that these are solutions that actually work. Our ability as municipalities to fund them and scale them

is pretty much non-existent on a municipal tax base. And that's where this massive problem needs a whole of government approach, where all levels of government are pulling in the same direction with the things that they can bring to the table. At the provincial level, that is operating dollars for these types of facilities. That is always the rate limiting factor for us. It has been all the way through.

We can build capital, we can get capital, we can raise money in the community, but we cannot get the healthcare operating dollars we need, which is why the announcement the government made is a positive step in actually moving forward with something that we can access and then start to deploy. Well, all right, let me pick up on that, this notion of you referenced hubs there. Mary Ann Mead Wardle, I'll pick up on that with you. The government at AMO, at the Municipalities of Ontario

meeting that we were all at a couple of weeks ago announced more than $370 million for what they call heart hubs, homelessness and addiction recovery treatment, HART hubs. What do you think those will achieve? Well that's great. For those communities that are getting that funding and for those residents that are able to access it, it will make a huge difference. But a funding announcement is not an action plan

that solves it for the entire province. And what we've seen is when a hub opens in one community, people in the surrounding communities, if they don't have access to those services, will migrate. And so we have people moving around the province to follow the services and try to get the services. It's needed in every community across this province and it really doesn't relate often to the size of the community. Right now, according to

Kingston's numbers, they have more people living on the street according to their records than people in Hamilton, which is two to three times the size. And so, you know, there is a need for action in every community. So we're grateful for the funding. We welcome the funding, but a funding announcement is not an action plan, which is why we need the government to appoint a single person, single point of contact,

who can convene that action table and build a plan that will solve this for all of Ontario simultaneously, and then be the model for the country because this is a national problem. This is not just unique to cities and towns in Ontario. So Mayor Preston, the template clearly is there. You've given examples, all of you, of what you've been doing to try and improve things. Things are working in some areas. What is stopping you from scaling this up to make it province-wide? Time. It just takes more time and effort to move forward and the requested time of funding whether as Mayor Morgan has said and as the

others have shared, we can make a request to the provincial government or the federal government for funding but it may be we're planning so far out for the project that we're talking about that it doesn't fix it today. And so we've got to keep this 18 month rolling plan going so that we can be asking for tomorrow's funding for tomorrow's healthcare funding or supportive housing funding while we solve today's issues with yesterday's funding. And so it really is about just staying active and keeping the community working well on it. We've been fairly successful with a by names list, knowing the names of the homeless in

our community and many of them, and working with the highest acuity into supportive housing first so that we can solve the problem in a genuine way. Mayor McKay, I want our viewers and listeners to get a better understanding of why this is such a protracted and challenging issue for you folks. And to that end, I think people understand that property taxes, the tax base, you know,

goes to garbage pickup, goes to keeping your water pure, goes to, you know, shoveling the roads in the wintertime, that kind of thing. Was it contemplated that the property tax base would also fund problems around homelessness, mental health, and addiction? No, absolutely not. That's one of the biggest challenges, particularly in our community. In our community, I'm the mayor of the city of Waterloo, but I'm here speaking more in my

capacity as the region of Waterloo counsellor because the region of Waterloo has the responsibility for housing, homelessness, public health, mental health and addictions. I can tell you that a few years ago, we used to spend approximately $1 billion on of Waterloo has responsibility for housing, homelessness, public health, mental health and addictions. And I can tell you that a few years ago, we used to spend approximately, sorry, I should say in 2024, we invested about $245 million into affordable housing and homelessness.

And that's about a third of the cost of the homelessness program. So we are putting an enormous, we're putting about 22% of our property taxes into solving this problem. A few years ago, like three or four years ago, it was maybe 10% of our property tax levy. But the bottom line is the property tax system

is not designed to take on and solve and fund chronic problems like this, chronic and complex problems like this. Property taxes were set up, as you said, for water and sewer services and roads and bridges and recreation programs and things of that nature. It was never designed to take on these kind of complex problems. And in Ontario, we're still the only province in Canada, province or territory in Canada that has social housing that's been downloaded as a municipal responsibility. And again, the property we need, we've been calling for the federal

and the provincial government for years. We've been asking them to have a fiscal and social policy review because the property tax system . we can deliver the programs . you've heard great examples from my colleagues here of how we can make it work on the ground.

We can deliver the programs. We know what will work in our communities. But we need that long-term operational funding. From the feds and operational funding because one of the from the feds in the province and one of the great things that we know works is proactive measures and upstream measures. We can do that as municipal leaders and municipalities, but we need that long-term operating money from the

feds in the province in order to do so. So Mayor Morgan, give us an indication of what a new deal for municipalities involving the other orders of government, what would that look like going forward if you had your way? Well first it would involve less of a dependence on property taxes which is a system that is 150 years old that was not designed to build modern cities with the complex challenges that we face and we need to be connected to economic and population growth in some more meaningful way with funding tools. That would be very, very helpful to municipalities.

One of the challenges we have is as each of us, you know, contribute to the economy and we grow our cities, all of those economic growth revenues, whether they be income taxes or sales taxes, none of them come back to municipalities. They all go to other levels of government and we don't actually see revenue growth with economic growth within our municipalities. And that's a challenge because certainly the challenges grow as cities grow, the costs grow as cities grow, and a reliance on just solely property taxes or the good grace of other levels of government and the programs they put or user fees really just lands pretty much all of those costs on local taxpayers without the

capacity to scale. And one of the things that I think we've been talking about here is municipalities have the ability to innovate. We can find solutions. We can deploy programs. We do not have the ability to scale those things for parental wide or national problems. That's what other levels of government do. And so we need the proper fiscal tools, but we also need leadership from other levels

of government to take solutions that municipalities come up with and then broadcast them and share them across the entire province of the entire country and allow a scale up of this to solve a problem like homelessness or mental health and addictions. These are not challenges that are unique to any individual city that we happen to be the mayor of. These are provincial wide national challenges that require that level of leadership and coordination as well. Mayor Meadward, let me get you to follow up on that

and I'll introduce this little anecdote to set up the question. I think everybody well remembers when John Tory was the mayor of Toronto, he used to say how sick and tired he was of going, I think he said, cap in hand with short pants on up to Queen's Park to try to beg for more money to get done what he wanted to get done. Is there a better alternative as you consider a new deal for cities to allow you to take on these kinds of issues besides constantly begging the other orders of government to

give you more money? Predictable sustainable funding is what we need based on population and economic growth. The current model is we wait for a government announcement, a program to open, we read the criteria, hope we qualify, we submit an application, we wait for somebody at Queen's Park to review that application, find out whether we got some or all or none of what we've asked for and then get the answer back. It is the definition of red tape and this government cares a lot, they say, about cutting red tape. So cut that first.

The gas tax is a perfect model for how we could move in a different direction. It is based on transit ridership, it is transparent. We don't have to line up and beg in short pants or short skirts to get the funding that our residents need. So get rid of the allocation program. That has been a discussion point, and there's some nervousness about it

because it's not, you know know what about the photo op what about the the government making the ability to make a big announcement and say we're doing something about whatever the issue of the day is and you know what we'll give you your photo op we'll give you the credit and the kudos we do that already with gas tax every time we get our allocation we talk about the buses we're buying or the electric vehicle charger infrastructure that we're putting in. Happy to continue to do that with federal and provincial partners. But the way that cities are funded right now is backwards, hasn't changed as you heard in a hundred and fifty years.

And when this government talks about, and I'm talking about about the provincial government talks about the fact that they haven't raised taxes it's because they've downloaded everything to us and we're not going to let our people suffer as we fight over jurisdiction or funding models we're just going to get in there and get stuff done and that means we have I can tell you in Halton region we subsidize provincial programs to the tune of $14 million every single year because it is unacceptable to us to let our residents suffer while we sort out what really needs to change, which is funding model and policy pieces as well. Quick follow-up here.

Do you like dealing with Queen's Park? I find them willing to listen to an argument if enough residents make enough noise. And so we hope that the solve the crisis.ca campaign, also a website as you heard, where residents can go to the page and write their own letter and their own thoughts. And it is targeted to your postal code.

So I am getting many dozens of residents talking about their personal thoughts, their personal experiences, to your postal code. So I am getting many dozens of residents talking about their personal thoughts, their personal experiences, seeing people in the streets of our city, wondering how they're doing, wanting us to take action. And that gets copied to the Premier. Councils are also asked to pass a resolution at their local councils.

We'll be doing that in Burlington and Halton region. But at AMO, because this is where we launched the campaign just before AMO, I had police, fire, paramedics, tourism, business, mayors from other municipalities saying how can I amplify and support this campaign because the time is now to act. The time for words is over. This program admittedly is a bit notorious for getting into the weeds on various issues and I guess I'll apologize in advance for doing that right now because I'm going to ask our director Sheldon Osmond, bottom of page three Sheldon, let's bring this chart

up. Thank you. We're going to go through this and for those listening on podcast, I'll just describe what we're seeing which is a pie chart showing the percentage of funds allocated to community housing, homelessness, and supportive housing by the various orders of government. And the data covers four years between 2014 and 2018, which is apparently the most recent data available.

And we see that the province is on the hook for 57% of those costs for those things, community housing, homelessness, and supportive housing. Municipalities for just over a quarter, and the feds are in for 17 percent. And I guess the question is, let's start with Mayor Presson on this one, what do those numbers say to you? Well, it's a big cost factor and as we've been saying, we probably need to re-examine how we're finding those funds municipally. It shouldn't be perhaps on the property owner's tax bill only. And so we need to establish, as that graph shows, the cost of solving this problem or

reaching out and solving it in a substantial way and say, is there another way we could do this? It looks like a fairly large issue that gets down to home in smaller and medium and larger municipalities. So Mayor Morgan, if we were going to create a system that worked better, however you want to define better, how would those numbers change? Well I think what you would do is you would define who is responsible for what components of the services that are being provided to the people of Ontario or the people of Canada. What should be provided and funded by city through property taxes and what should be

funded by provinces and federal governments. It's just a common sense approach to spending your finances and I think what we've had over the number of decades and hundreds of years of a property tax system is just this creep of either downloading or uploading or tweaking around the margins without taking a real serious look at how is the best possible way to actually fund these things so that we can actually achieve the results

that we all want to achieve. So, you know, I would see that graph shift to reflect that municipalities really only have property tax user fees, and then the dependence on levels of government to do everything that they're responsible to do. And everything that they've been responsible to do has been increasing over the time as cities have grown and become more complex.

It's just not reflective of the reality of a modern city. I think a step back approach, a thoughtful analysis of who is doing what and how it is best funded to be as efficient as possible and provide the best possible service delivery would be a model that I think coming out the other end that we could all be proud of and I think our common constituents would feel that they're getting great value for. Well let me raise the issue of constituents now with Mayor McCabe and that is, you know again I will remember Mike Harris back in the 1990s saying all the money is coming out of the same taxpayers pockets.

It may be allocated to different orders of government, but it's all coming from the same single taxpayer. So Mayor McCabe, I appreciate the argument you're trying to make today. I wonder whether it falls on deaf ears of taxpayers who are just thinking to themselves, you're all after me for more of my money. I understand you want to solve problems, but I only got so much. How do you respond to that? Well, and absolutely we understand that.

And we know there's a real affordability crisis in our communities and certainly across Ontario and the province and globally as well. We understand that. But in issues like this that we've been outlining, certainly the provincial government and the federal government, they have a much more variety of fiscal tools that they can use. And that's certainly far exceeds

what municipalities ability. As Mayor Morgan just said, we have user fees, we have property taxes, and that's about it in order to raise revenue. The province and the feds can they can take on more debt, they can they have many more fiscal levers that they can pull to support municipalities in doing this work. And I just wanted just going back to that graph that you showed one of the things that I think you said it's from 2018. I mean that is that is

far out of date in terms of how the property tax allocation is, at least in my community, because as I said, our property taxes in the region of Waterloo, there's about 22% of them are going to fund housing and homelessness issue and mental health and addictions issues. So that chart there is a few years out of date.

Well, this graphic here said 26%. So you're sort of in the neighborhood. Either way, it's too much, eh? Oh, it's entirely too much. I mean, a few years ago, our property taxes were maybe covering maybe 10% of the homelessness and housing and mental health and addictions of that nature. I mean, they really should be, these are programs that really should be funded with long-term operating funding from the province and the federal government.

And again, this is what the solve the crisis campaign and the call that municipalities have for years have asked for from the province and the federal government for the fiscal review that we need. Okay, we're literally a few minutes to the end here and I want to just get a couple of more things on the record if I can. Mayor Mead Ward you've made both publicly and privately the the call to the Premier and his government for this special minister in cabinet responsible for this one issue. What response did you get? We without a funding announcement which is very welcome but a funny announcements not an action plan so we'll keep asking and so we have confidence that enough voices saying the same thing and the the momentum of the campaign has to get minutes it exploded uh... beyond our

uh... expectations and i think it's because people are saying enough i care about people on the street. I want governments to ask, don't care whose jurisdiction it is and you know find a way to finance this properly and you know it's interesting to note that even though we're paying 26% and those are dated numbers, we get nine to ten cents on the dollar, municipalities. Our hospitals are functioning as as shelters, our police are functioning as mental health workers. If we corrected the problem upstream, we would actually save money because of those resources being deployed to solve the process the crisis right now. In which case Mayor Preston, if we were to reconvene you for, say, in three or four years

time, how confident are you that you will be able to say, here are the improvements we've made, and here's how we've been able to make them, thanks to the wisdom of all those involved? I'm fairly confident we can carry on at the pace we're going. Will that solve the problem in a timely enough manner. We have citizens saying we need to solve problems like this quicker. And it's a truly a financial issue with the other levels of government. I think we all know how to do it. It's getting the right direction and the right funding from the other levels of government to make

sure it does happen, whether it's policing or health care or housing itself we have to all carry on on the path we can't ignore the crisis that's out there and nor will we but we're asking for help from the other levels of government and perhaps not so not a bureaucratic help but a financial assistance. We're doing some of the right things. Will you help us fund it? Mayor Morgan, how about you on that question? If we reconvene you four in a few years' time, what's our conversation going to be like?

I think we will have made progress. I think for the first time in a long time, we see all orders of government recognizing this for what it is, and that is a crisis right we may not agree on all the pieces yet but we are united as mayors in the direction we need to go we are engaging effectively and proactively with other levels of government and they are recognizing that this is a crisis that they have to deal with the funding announcement is an excellent signal to say we understand that we have to do something. Now we're going to have conversations about how to make this as effective as possible

and what actually needs to be done. But I'm very optimistic that we have three levels of government here who are all agreeing that this is absolutely something that needs to be dealt with. It is a crisis. Our residents are demanding action on it and that we all agree that we're going to move forward together. And I think that gives me a lot of hope and optimism. We like Mayor Preston said, we know the solutions.

Like Mayor Meade Ward said, we are, you know, we are aligned as mayors. We know the direction we want to go. We are coordinated. We are organized and we are ready to play our part in solving this crisis. We need all levels of government to be involved. Mayor McCabe clearly with an eye to the, takes a few steps back to remind everybody of the slogan on her t-shirt. There we go.

And we thank Joshua Morgan, the Mayor of London, Mary Ann Meadward, the Mayor of Burlington, Dorothy McCabe, the Mayor of Waterloo, Joe Preston, the Mayor of St. Thomas, for joining us on TVO tonight. Many thanks, you four. Thank you. Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you. Take care, everyone.