The Region of Waterloo's Plan to End Chronic Homelessness has six years to reach its goal of "functional zero homelessness" but will need about $200 million in funding to get there.
On Tuesday, regional councillors on the health and community services committee endorsed the plan after hearing from 18 delegations, most of whom were there to urge council to support the plan's 30 calls to action.
They focus on a housing first approach, human rights, homelessness prevention, comprehensive rehousing support and a commitment to consulting people with first-hand experience.
The delegations, representing a broad mix of academia, newcomers, healthcare and social support agencies, called for increased investment from the provincial and federal governments to help the region achieve its goal.
The region believes that increased investment from upper levels of government will be achieved through a capital financing and advocacy strategy to be included in the preliminary 2025 budget.
It will include some combination of tax levy funding, financial support from community partners, and any subsidy secured from senior levels of government where advocacy efforts are successful.
Over the next six years the region estimates it will need to spend about $110 million on emergency shelters, transitional housing and supportive housing in addition to investing between $5 million and $8 million in annual operating costs to fully implement the plan.
The plan calls on council to prioritize community services funding in each budget from now until 2030 until functional zero homelessness is achieved
This year's homelessness operating budget of $56 million includes an incremental $10.2 million for the plan, with $7 million of that funded from the property tax levy and $3.2 million funded from the tax stabilization reserve fund.
Erin Dej, a Cambridge resident and associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, called the plan "comprehensive" beyond others she's seen and designed to address all root causes of homelessness.
She praised the preventative approach outlined in the plan, calling it "pivotal" and said the overall plan strives to build "a robust series of systems that can be nimble and adaptive to people's changing needs."
The preventative action items in the plan strive to stem the loss of affordable housing, while continuing to provide incentives to affordable housing development.
It also aims to protect tenants, prevent evictions, make sure tenants know their rights and provide rehousing support.
The region has been "playing catch up" to address homelessness since it exploded as a problem in the mid 1990s, Dej said, forcing staff to rely on old emergency responses that weren't designed to help this many people and respond to the complexities of the challenges they face.
Dej said the type of reactionary responses the region has engaged in over the last few years, including the one that closed the encampment at 150 Main St. last year, always ends up being "crude, quick and ultimately harmful."
"Like criminalizing people who are homeless and putting them through a never ending cycle of displacement that makes things worse for unhoused people and the community at large."
She agreed with Coun. Rob Deutschmann assessment that the only way the plan will be effective is if lower tier municipalities fully buy into it.
"We can't and we shouldn't kick every person who's homeless out of our city, so if you don't want to see it then we need to respond effectively and this plan is how we do it."
Kristina Eliashevsky of the Cambridge and North Dumfries Ontario Health Care Team, said there's an urgent need to find solutions to deal with the older unhoused population who leave hospital in "medical frailty" into homelessness.
"This will only escalate as our population ages," she said, calling for an unprecedented level of collaboration between primary caregivers and mental health and addiction support services to deal with it.
"Integrating these services with housing supports can quickly remedy precarious living situations from health issues."
At the last count in February, there were 558 individuals on the Prioritized Access to Housing Supports (PATHS) List experiencing chronic homelessness in Waterloo region.
The average number of days individuals on the PATHS list have been without permanent and safe housing is 1,403 days (3 years 8 months).
"This plan is a call to all organizations and all levels of government," said the region's commissioner of community services Peter Sweeney. "Transformational change, system change must occur for the complex issue of homelessness to improve."
