A city increasingly focused on homelessness: Mission CEO Peter Tilley’s reflections on recent Nanos survey

As The Ottawa Mission prepares for winter and an anticipated increase in community members seeking our support, our shelter is urging all levels of government to work together to address catastrophic levels of homelessness, food insecurity, mental health distress and substance use.

On October 19, The Ottawa Mission released a Nanos Research survey showing that Ottawa residents most often rank housing and homelessness as the top priority for the municipal government at 38%, an increase from 29% in 2019. Concerns about housing and homelessness far outstrip policing at 22% and light rail/transportation at 19% respectively.

This is not surprising given that 56% of Ottawa residents believe that the people they care about have at least a small risk of becoming homeless, which has increased from 46% in 2019.

More broadly, more than nine in ten Ottawa residents believe that homelessness in Canada has a serious (85%) or somewhat serious (7%) impact on those individuals affected. Likewise, most Ottawans say it has a serious (59%) or somewhat serious (30%) impact on Canada as a country.

Ottawa is a compassionate city that supports our most vulnerable citizens.

But homelessness, food insecurity, substance use and mental health distress have reached far beyond an emergency to now catastrophic levels. We continue to operate at over 100% capacity, with every shelter bed full and people sleeping on mats in our chapel and chairs in our lounge. We’re also dealing with a record number of overdoses since the closure of the remaining supervised consumption sites in Ottawa. And this is the fourth consecutive year that we’ve served over a million meals to clients at our shelter and through our food truck program.

Food insecurity is highlighted in the Nanos survey, with respondents estimating that about one in three Ottawa households cannot afford healthy food, which is slightly higher than the 2024 Ottawa Public Health estimate of 25.7%. In 2019, OPH estimated that 15.3% of households were food insecure.

There has been a shift in public opinion since the previous Nanos survey for The Mission in 2019. Fifty-four percent of Ottawa residents rank physical or mental health conditions or addictions as the biggest contributor to homelessness, which is down from 62% in 2019. Now, 23% rank a lack of affordable housing first, an increase from 17% in 2019.

This comes as no surprise given that the average rent for an apartment in Ottawa is now more than $2,100 per month, making it impossible for anyone on disability or income support or working in a low to medium wage position to afford a unit. Despite an extremely challenging rental market, The Mission successfully housed 165 clients during its last fiscal year.

It’s frustrating for us to see former clients we’ve found housing for return to our shelter due to factors like renovictions and demovictions. We commend city council for passing its renoviction bylaw. But Ottawa needs to do more, including strengthening this bylaw and returning the municipal budget allocation for new affordable and supportive housing to $30 million per year.

While respondents to the Nanos Research surveys stated that housing and homelessness should be the top priority for municipal council, they also noted the need for governments to work together to address this issue.

Social service organizations and charities are bearing an increasing burden of meeting the needs of vulnerable community members. We do what we can, but this trajectory is not sustainable.

Unless governments at all levels step up their efforts to work together to find solutions, things will get even worse.

-Peter Tilley for The Ottawa Mission