City of Hamilton staff are presenting a new 10-year Housing and Homelessness Plan to Council this week, with the three main themes of the plan centred on “investment, housing fit, and equity.”
The action plan is meant to cover from now until 2035.
Staff wrote that investment, of both “funding and effort,” is key to the plan in order to build or renovate affordable housing and to provide housing subsidies and housing supports.
For the theme of “housing fit” staff write that people should have “the right to choose – when available and appropriate – where they live, in a home that works best and is suitable for them and/or their family.”
Third, the action plan states that “equity will be embedded in all decisions, policies, and actions to ensure fairness while addressing existing and potential inequities.”
Housing and homelessness actions plans are a requirement of the provincial Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and are meant to identify the current state of housing and homelessness and set priorities, goals, and actionable tasks over a 10-year period.
The plan also identifies four key priorities, which are prevention and diversion, affordable and supportive housing stock, continuous quality improvement to services, and housing supports.
Through prevention and diversion, the city aims to reduce the number of people entering homelessness year over year.
The city is also aiming to keep an adequate and suitable supply of affordable and supportive housing and continuously improve services to meet changing needs.
Overall, staff say that “there is a need for the city to secure consistent and appropriate funding from all orders of government to ensure local taxpayers do not continue to bear the increasing costs of supporting some of society’s most vulnerable individuals.”
City of Hamilton taxpayers reportedly fund 75 per cent of the total investment in housing and homelessness, which is over three times more than other levels of government.
In the City of Hamilton, there are 42 social housing providers who manage 14,000 units, numerous affordable housing providers, 57 residential care facilities, 12 emergency shelters, transitional housing, and over 200 different community partners delivering a wide range of support.
There has been a 200 per cent increase in “unsheltered homelessness” in Hamilton from November 2020 to October 2025.
In 2025, Hamilton’s emergency shelter system served 3,260 unique individuals and had 6,642 active households on the housing waitlist.
To help manage the influx, the city added 272 new emergency shelter beds between 2024 and 2025 for a total of 823 beds.
The most current statistics can be found on the city’s Housing and Homelessness Dashboard, which shows that, as of May 2026, 2,190 individuals in the city are actively homeless.
The city’s shelter capacity numbers for May 2026 include 325 beds for men (currently at 95 per cent capacity), 101 beds for women (96 per cent full), 100 adult mixed beds (88 per cent full), 85 beds for asylum claimants (74 per cent full), 49 hotel overflow rooms (73 per cent full), 21 youth beds (47 per cent full), and 20 family rooms (91 per cent full).
The full action plan can be found here and has been submitted to the Ministry for review.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
