A new City Staff report on Ottawa’s Family Homelessness Strategy is highlighting an onslaught of significant issues and backlogs. It was brought up during this week’s Community Services Committee meeting at Ottawa City Hall. The city is witnessing a 76 percent increase in families experiencing homelessness since 2023 – going up from 377 to 664 dating back to last month. And while intake numbers are actually trending downwards, more and more families are getting caught in a social housing bottleneck, in which the average wait times could be as long as 8 years. CFRA’s Andrew Pinsent digs deeper with Katie Burkholder-Harris, the Executive Director of Alliance To End Homelessness Ottawa.

*We reached out to both the federal and provincial governments on this topic. We did not hear back from either the Carney Liberals or the Ontario PC’s when it comes to benefits, the slowdown in the funding from those benefits that Ottawa has been allocated, or whether there could be a top-up in the future.*