“Big city mayors” are calling on the federal and provincial governments to provide a concrete action plan to tackle the rising homelessness, drug addiction and overdose crisis facing many cities across the country.
The coalition of Ontario Mayor’s launched its “Solve the Crisis” campaign Wednesday. The mayors are asking for funding from other levels of government for a five-pronged plan they believe will help alleviate the “humanitarian crisis” facing their cities.
Mayors from 30 different cities with a population greater than 100,000 make up the organization.
“There is no reason why anyone should be dying in the streets of this country, given the wealth and the resources and the expertise that we have,” Marianne Meed Ward, OBCM’s chair and the mayor of Burlington, said in Toronto Thursday. “The crisis is growing, and it impacts every single municipality across our province, large and small, rural and urban. It affects our residents, our businesses, and our local governments, and we need solutions now.”
The mayors say they are grateful for the “piecemeal” funding announcements they receive from the other levels of government but that it’s insufficient for the scope of the problem. They are asking for a consistent, fixed and certain amount municipalities can use for various social programs and housing they believe are necessary to tackle the crisis.
They are asking for the province to appoint one minister with enough power and authority to be the single point of contact for all the ministries involved in tackling the issue.
Meed Ward said that having a single minister in charge of crises would be more efficient than having multiple ministers with intersecting responsibilities in the “spectrum of issues.”
The group wants the Minister to then create a “strike force” with “broad sector representatives,” such as municipal, healthcare, first responders, social workers and the private sector to develop and implement a plan to address the issue.
When asked if controversial “safe supply” drug programs and injection sites would be part of the plan, Ward said the “action table” would be where community members debated what solutions would be involved. On behalf of the mayors, she said they wanted to stay laser-focused on the crisis rather than get into specifics.
The mayors want help to fund community services, transitioning homeless people living in encampments to various levels of housing, and 24/7 community hubs and crisis centres to “relieve the pressure” on hospital emergency centres and first responders.
“We just want people that are first of all able and willing to get treatment to have a bed,” Meed Ward said. “We don’t even have that right now, where people who are willing to get treatment can get the treatment that they need, and then transition from an over an overnight, emergency shelter to supportive housing to transitional housing, to eventually long term permanent housing.”
When a reporter asked for an estimate of how much money the mayors are asking from the provincial and federal governments, Meed Ward did not have a number available. However, she said that the Halton Regional Government is spending $16 million a year on “wraparound supports” and the various levels of social housing.
She said the municipalities are “subsidizing” the province with their municipal property tax. She views these services, which she says alleviate homelessness and mental health crises, as the province’s job and should not come from the property tax.
“The property tax is a very regressive tax. It’s not based on income, it’s not based on economic development, so it wasn’t what property taxes were intended for,” she said. “Even though this isn’t our responsibility, and we don’t have the resources, we are still investing in this because our people are dying in our streets, our people feel unsafe in our streets. We’re showing what works by putting our money where our mouth is.”
Meed Ward claims investing in these social programs and housing will save provinces money in the long run. She said anecdotally, socialized housing has reduced the number of police interactions one individual had in London Ont., from 200 a year to zero. In another case from over 300 hospital visits in a year to “two or three.”