Ontario spending on homelessness ‘stagnate’ while problem worsens, new report says [Video]

A new report on homelessness across Ontario says the problem is getting worse while spending to address it has “stagnated,” as the province’s political parties offer differing solutions on the campaign trail.

The new data comes from the Maytree, a foundation committed to reducing poverty, which looked at publicly available spending figures on homelessness and contrasted them with recently released reports on the growing number of people experiencing homelessness in Ontario. 

Government spending on low income housing and homelessness has remained largely unchanged over the last decade, even when adjusted for inflation, said Alexi White, Maytree’s director of systems change.

“Spending has stagnated in real dollars,” White said. “We really aren’t spending any more than we were 10 years ago on housing and homelessness … We need a real plan, a real investment, a real time horizon, and a real goal that says we’re going to solve this thing.”

The report says that when adjusted for inflation, spending was around $1.3 billion in 2013-2014 and …