Can the Carney government end homelessness? (Not on its own)

Mark Carney is not the first prime minister to embrace an ambitious commitment about homelessness. He is not even the first prime minister to do so in the last 10 years.

In 2017, Justin Trudeau's government released its national housing strategy. As part of a broader plan for housing, the Trudeau government set a goal of reducing "chronic" homelessness by half over the subsequent decade — at the time, an estimated 25,000 people were said to be chronically homeless.

Three years later, in a speech from the throne, the Trudeau government went further, stating that it was now focused on "entirely eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada."

However worthy the goal, and whatever efforts the Trudeau government put toward achieving that goal, it was not met. A progress report released by the federal government last December acknowledged that there had been a 34 per cent increase in chronic homelessness among shelter users between 2016 and 2024.

Carney has committed himself to a more ambitious target — putting Canada on a path to end all homelessness within 10 years.

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  Can Canada end homelessness in the next 10 years?

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"There's no simple answer. This is a hard problem," Carney said in Winnipeg last week. "And hard problems demand the humility to learn from previous well-intentioned efforts that have fallen short. And it demands the resolve to build on what's succeeded."

Homelessness is hardly a new problem, but it was in the wake of the pandemic that homelessness came to the fore as a visible and salient concern in communities across Canada — exemplified by the issue of encampments in public places.

A national homelessness enumeration in 2025 found that more than 65,000 people were homeless on a given night in Canada, a 59 per cent increase over five years. The share of unhoused people living in unsheltered locations, including encampments, had also increased from 23 per cent to 27 per cent.

The underlying factors that might have contributed to the current situation are numerous and thorny: a longstanding lack of government funding for new social housing, an insufficient supply of rental housing, the disruption of the pandemic, the post-pandemic spike in inflation and the increasing cost of living, the opioid epidemic.

"It was on a rapid but slow burn from 1995 and then it hit 2018, 2019 and the housing crisis, pandemic, affordability crisis, toxic drug supply — all came together to create the problem we're seeing today," said Tim Richter, president and CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness.

In the face of a problem that was driven by overlapping crises and challenges, the Trudeau government's actions obviously weren't enough to solve the problem.

Nick Falvo, a researcher and consultant who focuses on homelessness, said the national housing strategy lacked an emphasis on supportive housing — "deeply subsidized housing with a lot of social work support."

Richter says the Trudeau-era plan failed to create enough deeply affordable housing of the sort that people on income-support programs could afford.

Carney's homelessness agenda

The Carney plan maintains two pieces of the Trudeau strategy.

As laid out in this month's budget, the Carney government plans to renew funding for the Canada Housing Benefit, a rent supplement for low-income Canadians. Both the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness and Falvo have argued that an expanded and better-targeted CHB could do even more to reduce homelessness. The Carney government is also maintaining a program — Reaching Home — that provides direct funding to communities to support efforts to reduce homelessness.

On top of that the government is adding three capital funds: $10 billion for supportive and transitional housing, $5 billion for "integrated supports" projects and $2 billion for new health-care infrastructure. The government is also directing new funding to Build Canada Homes in hopes of boosting the construction of non-market housing.

WATCH | Carney's mission to end homelessness starts in Manitoba:

Carney's mission to end homelessness kicks off with joint effort in Manitoba

November 6|

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More broadly, the Carney government is talking about a "renewed partnership" with the provinces, one in which the federal government would provide funding for capital (i.e. building things), while the provinces would fund operations and services.

"The Carney government's announcement is different in a couple of ways. One is they've set themselves a much bigger target," Richter said. "But they've also led with a major capital infusion.… And this conversation with the provinces. So their first steps are different than the Trudeau steps, which I think is important from a first-step point of view."

The challenge that Falvo sees is operational funding — the ongoing expenses that provincial governments will have to be willing to cover.

"I would say [the Carney government's plan] was a very impressive down payment. It showed great leadership," Falvo said. "I'll be very interested to see what happens with the provinces." 

The federal government has at least already found one province that was eager for a renewed partnership. In Manitoba, the Carney government committed $800 million toward the construction of 2,000 supportive and transitional homes and $200 million toward a new centre for mental health and addictions. The province will provide funding for the operation of both and cover half of the cost of constructing the centre. 

'Canadians want to do something'

In Winnipeg, Carney acknowledged that governments have spent "decades" trying to address homelessness. But, he said, "too often those efforts have been inadequately resourced, poorly co-ordinated and not sustained."

Richter co-authored a proposal earlier this year for a new national accord on housing, which would align all levels of government on solving the larger crisis of housing availability and affordability. On homelessness, Richter says the conversation between federal and provincial governments should focus not just on dollars, but on approaches, priorities and desired outcomes. 

Absolutely eliminating the phenomenon of homelessness is unrealistic, Richter says. But he and the CAEH talk about achieving "functional zero," whereby a community is able to house more people than will become homeless in a given month — a situation in which homelessness is rare, brief and not recurring. 

If it was somewhat surprising to see the Carney government — a government that has seemed resolutely focused on large macroeconomic issues — use its second budget to make such a headline-grabbing commitment to reduce homelessness, it's perhaps not a surprise that governments are feeling some pressure to do something.

"My theory is that his government started to realize that voters were growing quite unhappy with visible manifestations of poverty, homelessness and social disorder," Falvo said.

WATCH | How does the federal government plan to end homelessness?

How do the feds plan to end homelessness in Canada?

November 6|

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8:56

A survey commissioned by the CAEH earlier this year found that 66 per cent of Canadians encountered homelessness at least once per week, 39 per cent considered it a "very" or "extremely" serious problem and 60 per cent believe the problem has gotten worse in their community in the last few years.

(Earlier this year, Carney also told the Globe and Mail that he was reading Encampment by Maggie Helwig, which won this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing.)

But if the problem has become very visible, governments could also think not only about the long term, but also about what they can do to show visible progress in the near term, Richter suggests.

"If you look at the polling, it says like Canadians want to do something. They want to do the right thing," he said. "They feel compassion. They understand a lot of it is housing. It's also mental health and addiction. But they want to see a difference."

If the years since the last ambitious goal to reduce homelessness have unfortunately seen the problem get worse, that has perhaps at least created an even greater impetus for governments to finally solve the problem.