Homelessness. Measure Outcomes, Not Effort.

"We are trying hard" is not the same as "it is working."

London has done more than most Ontario cities on homelessness. The Hubs, the new 60-unit shelter on Cheese Factory Road, the 50-unit Indwell residence that opened in April 2026, and the $37.6 million Fund for Change are all real work. The active homeless list has come down from its September 2024 peak. But Ward 7 families want to know one thing: is all that spending actually moving people from crisis into stable housing?

This is not just a downtown issue, and it is not just a Ward 7 issue. Homelessness spending shows up on every property tax bill in London. It shows up in hospital emergency room volumes, in ambulance and police call loads, and in the vitality of the downtown core that every Londoner shares. When the response works, the whole city benefits: fewer crisis calls, more housed neighbours, lower long-term costs, and a downtown people want to spend time in. When it falls short, those costs land on every Londoner, regardless of ward. The City already collects the data to answer the question of whether it is working. The answer should be public, and it should sit on top of every budget vote.

• Set clear targets. Report on them every quarter.+

  Three goals for this term: bring the active homeless list below 1,000 people. Cut chronic homelessness in half from its 15.5 per cent share at the end of 2024. Move the highest-acuity individuals on the by-name list, roughly 200 people at year-end 2024 identified as needing the most intensive supports, into supportive housing within 90 days, and sustain that pace as new high-acuity individuals enter the system. The City already publishes most of this data on its public dashboard. I will push for every homelessness budget line to come with a target and a quarterly progress report, and I will be a tough vote on the ones that don’t.
• Build supportive housing using tools Council already has.+

  Four moves, all available to Council right now. One: waive development charges on non-profit supportive and deeply affordable units. Two: build supportive housing in London’s transit zones, where residents can reach jobs, services, and health care without depending on a car. Three: sell surplus City land to non-profit housing builders for nominal cost, with a target of at least 150 supportive units delivered this term. Four: pre-approve missing-middle housing designs along the Hyde Park and Sunningdale growth fronts, so non-profit builders are not paying two years of consultant fees to do what the City should already permit.
• Use vacant-building revenue to expand supportive housing.+

  Priority 1 sets up a vacant commercial building bylaw with registry fees and escalating penalties, with revenue already earmarked for downtown revitalization and affordable housing. I will push to dedicate half of that revenue to a fund that buys distressed properties and hands them to non-profits to operate as supportive housing. Toronto already does this through its Multi-Unit Residential Acquisition program. Empty buildings in a housing crisis can help fund the housing we are short.
• Help people stay housed before they fall into the system.+

  London houses about 42 families per quarter from a 7,400-person community housing wait list. That math does not end homelessness. It manages it. The cheapest supportive housing unit is the one a family never has to leave. Three upstream tools: a properly funded rent bank that covers emergency rent shortfalls before an eviction, stronger enforcement when landlords use eviction notices in bad faith to push out long-term tenants, and a public count on the dashboard of how many evictions-into-homelessness the City prevented each year.
• Push the Province to carry its share, and use the Council vote as leverage.+

  Roughly half of what fills London’s encampments is provincial responsibility, including mental health care, addictions treatment, social assistance, and hospital discharge planning. The Mayor and Ontario’s Big City Mayors have been making that case since 2024. That advocacy matters, and it needs sharper teeth at the budget table. I will push for written cost-sharing agreements when London is asked to carry provincial costs, and for encampment management spending to be paired with a funded supportive-housing pipeline. Council votes are leverage. The next councillor for Ward 7 should be willing to use them.
• Don’t clear encampments without offering people somewhere to go.+

  People without a place to go don’t disappear when an encampment is cleared. They move to the next park, the next trail, the next ravine. The City’s current outreach-first model is the right one, and it should be faster and better resourced. Three measurements to make it accountable: a published minimum notice period before any clearance, a published count of housing offers made and accepted at each one, and Indigenous-led outreach for the 19.7 per cent of the by-name list that identifies as Indigenous, a figure the City’s own snapshot notes is known to be higher in practice, as reflected by Indigenous agencies working in the community. A rights-based approach without numbers is a slogan. With numbers, it is a policy.